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I sent in answers to help with your survey, but I'm highly skeptical of the statistical methodology. You are selecting for people who at least think they know t
by psykotic 14y ago
I sent in answers to help with your survey, but I'm highly skeptical of the statistical methodology. You are selecting for people who at least think they know the answers. My prediction is that you are going to see a rosy picture of the state of CS knowledge among software developers, even though the reality is probably closer to the exact opposite.
- cperciva 14y agoI'm asking everybody to submit answers, and there are plenty of people submitting "I don't know"s.
- tmoertel 14y agoEven though you asked everybody to submit answers, you should expect people who expect themselves to do poorly to opt out. So your sample, I suspect, is strongly biased toward the answers from people who expected not to do poorly. And that bias is indeed likely to paint a rosy picture of the reality.
- cperciva 14y agoQuite true -- I'll definitely have to be careful in how I interpret the data. I'm hoping that the issue I'm most interested in -- comparing how people do on different questions, and comparing how different people do, will be less strongly biased by the poor sampling method.