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American Government / Unit 4   Gov 170 short lesson, about 20 seconds

ERROR: "A Bigger Sample Beats a Random Sample"

Captions available

The idea

The claim that a bigger sample beats a random sample is false: a biased sample stays biased at any size.

In practice

In 1936 Literary Digest collected millions of responses and still called the presidential election wrong.

Where people slip

Size shrinks the margin of error only after randomness has done its work.

Your place on the trail

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Unlocks

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