X-Message-Number: 27748
References: <>
From: Kennita Watson <>
Subject: Re: FDGD 2006 Survey Analysis/Commentary (LONG)
Date: Thu, 23 Mar 2006 05:40:12 -0800
Thanks for the input, David! One note first: I'd
be interested to find out if there are any questions
on which there are major (even if not significant)
differences between the answers given by men and by
women, or by people in different age ranges.
> From: David Stodolsky <>
> Subject: Re: FDGD 2006 Survey Analysis/Commentary (LONG)
> Date: Wed, 22 Mar 2006 20:06:53 +0100
>
> On 20 Mar 2006, at 22:37, Kennita Watson wrote:
>> Frozen Dead Guy Days 2006
>> Cryonics Awareness/Attitudes Survey
>>
>> Questions About Grandpa Bredo
>> 1) Do you think Grandpa Bredo has been properly cryopreserved? 12
>> _Yes 30 _No 38 _Don't know
>
> Not Significant (NS) result.
>
> (A non-significant result means that the data can be accounted for by
> random responses, data getting scrambled in transfer to machine
> readable format, etc. However, this doesn't mean that data were
> scrambled, etc.)
It seems to me that random responses would
give a much more even distribution. 30 and 38
are pretty close, but with 12, it seems clear
that fewer people think Yes than No. For the
Don't Knows to even things out, they'd have to
be biased almost 3 to 1 toward Yes. What am I
missing here?
>
>> 2) What do you think the chances are that science will ever allow us
>> to revive Grandpa Bredo?
>> 0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80%
>> 90% 100%
>> 38 from 0-10%
>> 14 20-40%
>> 13 50% (the "I don't know" answer)
>
> 50% and "Don't know" should be separated, otherwise, the data risks
> distortion.
Quite true. I plead lack of space. Definitely fewer
questions on Release 3.0.
>
>> 8 60-80%
>> 5 90-100%
>
> Median 15%, Mean 28%
>
>> What I was looking for was the spread between this and the answers to
>> Q11-Q13, which demonstrate that people see the difference in the
>> chances afforded by modern cryonics procedures.
>
> Scales are different, making comparisons of limited value:
>
> Mean difference is 1.9 or 19%, Highly significant (p<.0001). So,
> people can see the difference.
Does the number mean that the mean chance given in Q13
is 47%? Not bad odds, given how little people on the
street know about cryonics.
>
>> 3) If >0%, how many years do you think it will be before he is
>> revived?
>> 4 _<20
>> 16 _20-50
>> 15 _50-100
>> 13 _100-200
>> 1 _200-500
>> 2 _>500
>> Two people who said 0% to Q2 answered Q3 too (they were the only
>> ">500" people). I think I could combine the two and alleviate
>> confusion by having a "Never" choice on Q3. Basically, people figure
>> that if we can revive him at all, we can do it in the next 200 years.
>
> Failure to use an interval scale makes it impossible to test this
> without grouping the data.
> Post-hoc grouping eliminates any valid test options.
I thought that what I used *was* an interval scale.
The interval scale is what did the grouping. Or
maybe "post hoc" means something different than I
thought. I'm also not sure what test options you
think were eliminated by the post-hoc grouping I
don't think I was doing.
> The best that can be said is that random responding can be rejected
> as an explanation for the last two values.
>>
>> Questions About Frozen Dead Guy Days
>> 5) The Frozen Dead Guy Days trivialize cryonics and make it look
>> ridiculous. 2 Yes / 56 No / 22 Maybe
>> It's good to see that No outnumbers Yes and Maybe together by more
>> than 2 to 1.
>
> This is post-hoc grouping.
Why is that bad here? It shows that even if
all the Maybes were Yes, No would still be a clear
winner (which from my POV is a good thing). What
other interpretation might it have?
>
> This (Yes) result is significant ( p=.025).
>
> The rest of the questions in this section, About Frozen Dead Guy
> Days, do not yield sig. results.
Meaning that it's likely that the results are
due to chance? How low does p have to be for
the results to be significant? And, for example,
what is p for Q6 (45 Yes / 8 No / 27 Maybe)? I
tried reading about statistical significance on
the Web, and my head started to spin in fairly
short order.
>
>> Questions About Cryonics
>> 11) Do you think science will ever allow us to revive anyone
>> currently cryonically preserved?
>
> Median = 4
> Mean = 4.8
> A "Maybe"
>
Perfectly reasonable, given a lack of knowledge.
>
>> 12) If so, how many years would you guess it will be before the first
>> successful revival?
>> 6 _<20
>> 23 _20-50
>> 20 _50-100
>> 15 _100-200
>> 3 _200-500
>> 3 _>500
>
> Sig. result.
I think you're saying that the result is
not due to chance with some high probability.
Can you say in English what that "result" is?
>
>> 13) If not, how many years do you think it will be before we are able
>> to cryonically preserve
>> people so that they can be revived at some later date?
>> 5 _<20
>> 13 _20-50
>> 12 _50-100
>> 7 _100-200
>> 1 _200-500
>> 2 _>500
>> 5 _Never
>
> Sig. result
Same question.
>
>> 14) Before Frozen Dead Guy Days 2006, did you know that cryonics is
>> accessible to the general
>> public (for example, payable by means of a life insurance policy)?
>> 36 _Yes 43 _No
>
> NS
What this says to me in English is that about
the same number of people knew as didn't know.
The difference is not significant, and the
lack of difference is significant. Something
like that.
>> Questions About You
>> 16) What is your current age?
>> 7 _<18
>> 11 _18-25
>> 18 _26-35
>> 17 _36-45
>> 16 _46-55
>> 9 _56-65
>> 2 _66-75
>> 0 _>75
>
> Sig.
Significantly what? Does it give an average
age?
>>
>> 17) You are: 35_Male 44_Female
>
> NS
>
Again, it seems that the lack of difference
is significant, and that the ratio of men to
women is close enough to 1:1 that this can be
considered a "representative sample" along
that axis.
>
>> 18) How much would you say you enjoy life overall now?
>> Not at all
>> some
>> pretty well
>> very much!
>> 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8
>> 9 10
>
> Median = 9
> Mean = 8.3
How much would those numbers have to change
(with a similar sample size) to say that the
change was significant?
>
>> 19) Till what age would you like to live if you could be in good
>> health the entire time? (circle one)
>
> Sig.
Significantly what?
>
>> 20) What do you guess the world will be like in the far future,
>> compared to today?
>
> NS
>
Seems here to just mean "pretty wide spread".
Again it seems that getting a mean and median
so they could be compared to other surveys
would be instructive.
>> 21) If money were no object, would you consider cryonic preservation
>> for yourself (and, if you
>> like, for people you care about)? 9 _Yes 48 _No 21 _Maybe
>
> NS
So cryonics may be more popular than this
result seems to indicate?
>
>> This graph cross-correlating the answers to Q20 and Q21 corroborates
>> the association between optimism about the future and willingness to
>> consider cryonics.
>
> There is a trend here, but there isn't enough data to safely say the
> result is valid.
How much data would it take? And how is "valid"
different from "significant"? Or is there a
significant trend?
>
> I have not performed any test of the differences between 2005 and
> 2006 data, since the data collection procedure was different. This
> makes it impossible to say whether a change results from a different
> procedure or a difference in the population.
How was the data collection procedure different in cases
where the questions were the same?
Thanks again. I hope to use your answers to improve
the survey further in future years.
Live long and prosper,
Kennita
--
Emancipate yourselves from mental slavery;
none but ourselves can free our minds.
-- Bob Marley, "Redemption Song"
Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=27748