---
layout: post
title: 7 out of 10
date: 2012-03-29
tags: ["Clique","constitution","General","health care","Law","Morning Edition","NP Complete.","NPR","poll","SAT","statistics","survey"]
---

> 7 out of 10 Americans believe the health care law is unconstitutional.

hmm.

> 7 out of 10 Americans believe the health care law is unconstitutional.

This quote was in an article on [Morning Edition](https://www.npr.org/programs/morning-edition/) as I was driving in to work this morning. The first thing that came to my mind when I heard this was "are 7 out of 10 Americans remotely qualified to say if a law is unconstitutional?" Could 7 out of 10 Americans name the relevant sections of the Constitution which are being used to argue this case? ([Interstate Commerce](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commerce_Clause) and Congress' [Taxing Authority](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taxing_and_Spending_Clause) to name some of the main ones.) I am quite certainly more versed on Constitutionality than the average bear, I have read quite a bit about the Court in general, I have listened to the Oral Arguments in the case, and I don't think I am qualified to answer the question of the Constitutionality of that or any other law.

In the same article, they also said:

> 7 out of 10 Americans are opposed to the individual mandate.

Ok, there we go, that is a polling question I can understand and support the data on.  It is a question where the people answering it have the basis to share their feelings.

I don't understand how a news or polling organization can reasonably ask a question for which the people answering the question are unqualified to even understand the topic on which the question is based?

> 8 out of 10 Americans believe that the [Clique Problem](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clique_problem) can be shown to be [NP Complete](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Np_complete) by reducing it to [Boolean Satisfiability Problem](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boolean_satisfiability_problem).

People would laugh at any survey that shared this "fact." (Or at least I would hope they would.)  It isn't that the assertion isn't correct (it is), it is just that it is a question that is meaningless to 99% of people out there.  This is not meant to be an insult to 99% of people, just that we should not be presenting statistics on questions that people have no reasonable basis for knowing the answer.

Please stick to questions on polls where people have a reasonably good chance of being able to be informed.  It is probably impolite to say, but if you are not informed about a topic, your opinion really does not make much sense, because you have no basis to form an opinion.