[gnso-rpm-wg] Directly from INTA's website: What the TTAB has to say about sample size

[George Kirikos]

Hi Iain,

On Fri, Sep 1, 2017 at 5:48 AM, CONNOR Iain
<Iain.Connor at pinsentmasons.com> wrote:
> George – on the basis of your acceptance “No one is denying those 33 members
> of INTA who answered the survey had
> those experiences or opinions.” it is inappropriate for you to persist with
> your previous suggestion that this evidence should be ignored.

Nice try, but what you left out of your partial quote was the "meat", namely:

"What *is* in dispute is whether one should extract any truth about
those experiences when talking about the larger populations, namely
(1) all INTA members, and (b) all TM
holders. Because of the issues with the study, it would not be
credible to do so."

Which is entirely consistent with what I said, and will persist in
saying, namely that the proffered "evidence" has no weight (and should
be ignored). The survey is weaker than "a set of anecdotes", weaker
than "raised a question as to the overall validity of the survey
results", and objectively into the realm of a bad survey for all the
reasons previously stated (""However, if the sample of respondents is
not representative of the
universe from which it was selected, it will be accorded little
weight" AND the issues of size, combined).

One has to separate advocacy on this group from objective and
scientific review. I'm pretty confident that if folks here saw that
kind of "evidence" offered by an opponent in a courtroom or tribunal,
they'd be making the identical arguments that I am -- and those would
be the winning arguments, as they're backed by the long history of
science/math/statistics. All the "pounding on the table" in the world
won't turn those 33 respondents into the 300+ that might have made
them statistically significant, nor fix the fact that they were not a
representative sample of the INTA membership, nor the broader group of
TM holders worldwide.

Paul Keating later wrote: "If it had been issued by any other entity i
am sure you would have laughed it out of the room" I'm confident and
agree that it would indeed have been the source of great laughter (or
in my case, from someone with a background in quantitative
finance/math/econometrics, horror at the abuse of statistics/math,
followed by laughter).

Sincerely,

George Kirikos
416-588-0269
http://www.leap.com/