Tuesday, July 12, 2016

Of SLOPs, Bad Polls, and Football



So there's this above, the most popular college football team in every state. Notice anything, Bulldog fans? Georgia Tech is the most popular in Georgia. Want even more? UAB is the most popular team in Alabama.

You're thinking, WTF?

Here's an explanation, from the story linked above in the first graf:
Fans voted through Google Forms, casting their vote for one of the state's teams. For example, 459 readers voted in the state of Alabama poll, with 249 picking UAB as their "favorite" team and 110 voting Alabama as their "favorite" team. Auburn received 71 votes and 29 people picked Other, a group that could include South Alabama or FCS team Jacksonville State.
This is a SLOP, a self-selected opinion poll, also known in the public opinion business as complete bullshit. Fun, yes. Interesting, maybe. But never ever to be taken seriously. Given this is about football, it's okay as nothing from this poll really matters except, maybe, hurting the feelings of certain fans. Maybe Georgia Tech fans know how to use Google Forms and UGA fans don't. Maybe a bunch of UAB fans organized and swamped the poll to knock out the Tide and War Eagle/Tiger/Plainsmen. Who knows, and it really doesn't matter of course.

You can see the stats here, via the Reddit page.






2 comments:

Digital Narhwal said...

I'm not really all that surprised that Tech is the favorite team among Georgia /r/CFB Redditors. Even the UGA subreddit isn't really that active.

Hollander said...

Excellent point. Yeah, I'd expect the Tech folks to be more avid redditors. I check the UGA subreddit every few days, even sometimes post there, but it's not very active.