[wieghant]

* The Boaty McBoatface is /r/iamverysmart territory. It was lighthearted and brought interest from across the world - not everything has to be named after a Greek tragedy.

* As for Brexit. Well, the public in general was unaware of the benefits of being in EU to begin with. Ultimately it was the 'experts' - the people in charge of conveying information - who failed. Not democracy. Democracy is by no means perfect, the metrics for who are qualified to vote hasn't been set.

* The language barrier. For some reason I really doubt that's true. What polls are in questions? I can't find any sources in the article. 4% deviation is completely normal if the question was asked from same people a year later.

Crowdsourcing is amazing, as long as your target group is set properly. This entire article is regurgitating intro into statistics. I do agree with the consensus part. The very problem was relevant in assessing difficulty of 'stories' in software development. When devs were asked to just number the difficulty, people lost sense of responsibility and would normally vote for extremes (very easy or very hard). Hence, the people who chose lowest and highest had to explain why they chose that specific number.

[mike-cardwell]

Re the langugage barrier. The difference was much more than 4%. What he wrote:

  When asked if the voting age should be lowered 57% said no.

  When asked if 16 and 17-year-olds should have the right to vote, 61% said yes.

What he should have wrote:

  When asked if the voting age should be lowered 43% said yes.

  When asked if 16 and 17-year-olds should have the right to vote, 61% said yes.

I don't know why he wrote it the way he did. Seemed bizarre to me.

[RyanZAG]

Might have wrote it that way to be deliberately confusing.

Where's the source for these numbers? Did the polls have similar number of respondents? If these were online polls, was one poll shared on certain internet groups and not the other?

Also the two statements are not the same thing. 'Right to vote' and 'Allowed to vote' are different. A useful follow up poll would be to gauge the percentage of people who believed that 16 year olds have a right to vote, but should also not be allowed to vote. I believe that number may be significant. You can think of it in terms of death row criminals: there is an argument that they have a right to life, but also that the victims have a right to justice. Which right is more important is not something everyone agrees on. That type of logic applies to the questions of voting too.

[mike-cardwell]

I don't know why he would have written it that way on purpose to be deliberately confusing, as the non-confusing way would seem to have given more weight to his point, rather than less.

[RyanZAG]

I don't know why either, but it seems almost impossible to do it by mistake? Which leaves doing it on purpose the more likely, but why he would do it on purpose is a mystery. As you say, it's bizarre.

[derriz]

I'm curious why do you find it bizarre?

The positive versus negative results emphasize the contrast?

"When asked if the voting age should be lowered the majority said no." BUT "When asked if 16 and 17-year-olds should have the right to vote, the majority said yes.

Replacing the expression "the majority" with actual percentages just adds more information.

[mike-cardwell]

I found it bizarre, because he could have listed two questions which were the same but worded differently. But instead, he listed two questions which were opposite and worded differently.

Compare these two equivalent questions:

  Is 4 greater than 2 ? Yes
  Is the number four greater than the number two ? Yes

Vs this:

  Is 4 greater than 2 ? Yes
  Is the number two greater than the number four ? No

He did the second, not the first.

[Ygg2]

Except the questions asked aren't equivalent to original. Here is equivalent: Should x be lower than 18? Should x be 16 or 17?

First question makes numbers like 12 or 13 valid. Second doesn't.

[mike-cardwell]

The questions are equivalent as originally written in the article:

  One poll asked the following question: 

  “Should the voting age be lowered to sixteen?”

  The second poll asked: 

  “Should sixteen and seventeen-year-olds be allowed to vote?”

When he later repeated the questions with percentage figures, he did in fact write what I quoted, which was:

  "When asked if the voting age should be lowered 57% said no"

So within the context of the article, what I said was correct. But if you just read my comment and nothing else, you would be correct.

[Ygg2]

Yeah, I meant your comment.