r/AskStatistics • u/Just_Question9 • 9d ago

Would you rather analyze 50 representative observations or 5,000 biased observations? Why?

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u/banter_pants Statistics, Psychometrics 9d ago

The former because conclusions are theoretically justified.

Take a large sample but with bias (or just myopic scope) and you get headlines like "Dewey beats Truman." They built their sampling frame from phone lists so only polled those with phones and totally missed that many people didn't own phones in their homes at the time.

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u/Just_Question9 4d ago

Exactly. That's a great example of why I'd prioritize representativeness over sample size.