View Single Post
  #24  
Old 06-12-2009, 06:09 PM
mithrandir's Avatar
mithrandir (Andrew)
Registered User

mithrandir is offline
 
Join Date: Jan 2009
Location: Glenhaven
Posts: 4,161
Quote:
Originally Posted by renormalised View Post
1200 people is statistically insignificant anyway. ...
Whether a given number of people is a statistically valid sample size depends on what your are trying to measure.

If 50% of the population have the characteristic for which you are testing, 1200 is probably oversampling. If it was 1% it is not enough.

Left handed people are around 8% of the population.

For left/right comparisons, 1200 is about the right size for hypothesis testing for statistics valid at the 95% confidence level. Every extra conclusion you draw means you need a bigger sample size, so I'd agree he hasn't tested enough people.

Then again, this is soft science. You can't believe anything they say.
Reply With Quote