research methods

so, in my sample of six (my four commenters, P, and me) there are four lickers and two pudding-wasters non-lickers. Thank you for your commitment to research, and you may wish to stop reading here. continue at your own risk with the knowledge that you'll never get that time back.

there are currently 300,364,113 americans (21:35 GMT (EST+5) Dec 08, 2006)

approx 5,000,000 are under 1, so they don't eat pudding

approx 39,948,427 are below the poverty line and possibly can't afford pudding (although if they do buy it, perhaps they're less likely to waste the part on the lid?)

this leaves 255,415,686 people

surely not everyone likes pudding, and some people may even be allergic. we'll go with 1/6 since that's how many couples are infertile, and this is obviously unrelated to that but.... that's another 42,654,420 to deduct leaving 212,761,266 pudding-consuming americans.

however.

2/3 of all americans are on a diet or are trying to lose weight. of those, 1/3 are being diligent, 1/3 are cheating but feeling guilty, and the remaining 1/3 are currently buying pudding. so we'll remove another 1/3, or 99,120,157 leaving 113,641,109 people.

some people don't eat individual pudding cups but will eat the boxed kind. for instance, my fatherinlaw only eats the kind you have to cook. we'll go with 1/6 again because I feel like it and because there are usually 6 puddings in a package. 18,940,184. this decreases our population to 94,700,925.

did you know I don't even buy pudding for myself? I buy it for P.

anyway, some 34,000,000 people watch american idol. I have no idea why. their opinions, however, can't be trusted, so they don't get a vote. i forgot to remove them earlier, but i'll do it here since you all can't possibly still be reading and we'll just pretend that's what they put the margin of error in for in the first place. 60,700,925 is a much better sample.

speaking of samples, no, we weren't speaking of samples.

the whole point was to tell you that my sample size of six people is very appropriate and yields a confidence interval of 35%. this means that my survey is probably over a third accurate.

there are lots of good things about one third. one third of women 40-69 are dating a man 10 or more years younger. good for them. i think. one third of parks have between 100 and 500 acres. who doesn't like a big park? approximately one third of twins are identical, one third same-sex fraternal, and the final third are the infertile's coveted boy/girl twins.

so you see, one third is very good, my sample is sufficient to say that you people throwing away unlicked lids are not only in the minority, but will also not date a younger man, go to a big park, or have boy/girl twins.