I have modified the information provided on the Survey form and hopefully I
leave no ambiguity regarding my purpose in conducting this survey.
I'm really looking forward to having many R users fill out the survey.

I apologize once again to the many respondents whose genuine questions I
seemingly was trying to evade. I misinterpreted their comments and feedback
as unfounded criticism and reacted inappropriately loosing sight of the
essential asks.

The survey can be found here goo.gl/jw1ig

Regards,
Harsh Singhal











On Sat, Mar 5, 2011 at 3:51 AM, Greg Snow <Greg.Snow@imail.org> wrote:

> Thanks Hadley,
>
> Your response here and some I received offline made me look back at what I
> said and others and I could have phrased things better.  My phrase of
> "voluntary response" was a bit vague (but is what is used in the course
> materials I teach from, so that is what came to mind).
>
> I specifically meant surveys without random selection where the respondents
> go to some effort to select themselves into the sample.  I feel that this
> survey fits that category, though definitely not as bad as those where
> people have to call a phone number and pay a fee to respond.  Hash's survey
> still looks like it is going to suffer from undercoverage and there could be
> serious bias from that.  There are methods for adjusting for undercoverage,
> but I don't see how Hash will have the information needed to do those kinds
> of corrections (however I am still learning and would be interested if there
> is the type of info and methods available for his).
>
> Also looking back, I mistakenly assumed that he was planning on doing
> inference, but I don't see anywhere in his posts that he stated that, so
> that was my fault and I came on a bit strong based on that mistake, I
> apologize for that.  Offline he told me that he is planning on just doing
> descriptives and as long as he is up front about the limitations of the data
> and limits himself to descriptive, then the survey could be reasonable.
>  Statements like "at least 3 people from region X use R" don't require
> probability samples (just assumptions that those 3 people were honest about
> being from region X), inference about how many others in region X use R
> would need more/better information.
>
> Hopefully that clarifies my position and people can start liking me again,
>
> --
> Gregory (Greg) L. Snow Ph.D.
> Statistical Data Center
> Intermountain Healthcare
> greg.snow@imail.org
> 801.408.8111
>
>
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: h.wickham@gmail.com [mailto:h.wickham@gmail.com] On Behalf Of
> > Hadley Wickham
> > Sent: Friday, March 04, 2011 1:28 PM
> > To: Greg Snow
> > Cc: Harsh; r-help@r-project.org
> > Subject: Re: [R] R usage survey
> >
> > > Ok, I am very interested in what methods you plan to use that would
> > be fit under the description "suitably analyzed" for voluntary response
> > data.  From my training and experience the only suitable thing to do
> > with voluntary response data is to put it through the shredder, into
> > the recycle bin, or use as an example of what not to do in introductory
> > textbooks.  Treating voluntary response data (especially given the
> > responses to your post you have seen so far) as if it came from a
> > proper random probability sample does not fit the idea of suitable
> > analysis.
> >
> > Come on, that's a bit strong.  In real life, it's not always possible
> > to take a perfectly random sample and assume (at best) that missing
> > responses are completely at random. Even descriptive analysis on a
> > flawed sample is better than nothing at all.  Of course you need to be
> > extremely careful about making inferences about the wider population,
> > but it's not true that the only thing you can do with survey data is
> > to throw it in the trash.
> >
> > Hadley
> >
> > --
> > Assistant Professor / Dobelman Family Junior Chair
> > Department of Statistics / Rice University
> > http://had.co.nz/
>

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