Sports Sedan

Are you sure? I thought they got Ford Pintos and were made to have rear end collisions!

nospam

Wait a minute! If you remember correctly, based on numbers alone Al Gore won.. Yes its true.. Al Gore won the popular vote. But unfortunately, that wasnt good enough... GW still won the electoral college vote

In addition, GW's approval rating is falling.

The original comment was a wise ass trying to get a rise just for fun of it...

Oh well..

-A

There is nothing "scientific" about these surveys. They are merely surveys with no control group. No hypothesis. Nothing suggesting a scientific method.

Yes they are. They are all equally flawed.

-Fred W

What's the other thing?

Damned if I can remember. And Google is no help in the matter...

/daytripper '00 s4 6spd. Nevermind. We'll keep it at just the one thing ;-)

It is a survey conducted using a proper SRS. What do you need a control group for if you have no motive to prove a theorem (or hypothesis)? Once you take a large enough sample you can use scientific methods to create a confidence interval. Hypothesis testing is just one use for the statistical methods used in surveys like these.

Anyway, how are you going to have a control group? Sell people placebo cars that just look like a BMW but are actually a Hyundai under the skin?

Since the same formulas and survey methods are used for the creation of the confidence intervals as what would have been used in a hypothesis testing, I fail to see how one is more scientific than the other.

Ron.

You are pointing out the differences between statistics and science. Statistics do not *scientifically* prove or disprove anything. That is my point. Not that what they say is or is not valid, but that it is not

-Fred

Statistics use science (math) in order to predict population parameters based on a sample with confidence levels and margins of errors (that's the science part of it). If a survey is done using true SRS with large enough sample sizes, we can say that we are presenting statistical data analyzed and collected scientifically from it. That's all I mean by that.

They do not provide a e=mc^2 kind of proof, but than the world we live in is too complicated to reduce into simple linear equations - and statistics (when properly interpreted, but this is an entirely different issue) can provide us with very accurate prediction of the real population parameters. All I saying is that from my understanding, JD follows the required procedures in order to present information that is not biased, and thus (as the science tells us) is a good indication of the true situation.

Before we get into sematics of language - my original post was that slamming JDPower as a mere marketing organization that provides useless information is far from the truth as I see it.

FWIW - We know from Quatum Mechanics that even e=mc^2 breaks down in certain situations - so there is no true scientific "silver bullet" out there.

Ron.

Anyone who even tries to claim science can prove anything is idiot.

"in any axiomatic mathematical system there are propositions that cannot be proved or disproved within the axioms of the system" - Kurt Godel.

Ron.

Paging Douglas Hofstadter to the thread :)

What does the above sentence mean? I don't get it.

Don't have one, personally, but if the standard for idiocy is so low, I'm sure I can qualify in some other way. ...or was that an Audi "insider" joke?

-Fred W

I never said it was *totally* useless. Just *marginally* useless. Marketing analysts simply want to predict what people *will* want and dammit, *I* am just not that predictable! You can pretty much tell where one of a flock of *sheep* will end up, but that doesn't apply to real Car Guys (TM).

There is no way that J.D. Power or any marketing organization can provide any meaningful input to an enthusiast that will tell me, for example, whether I'll be happier or feel more at home in a 2002 Jaguar X-Type or in a 1988 BMW 535is or in a 2003 Chevy Cavalier. Anybody want to hazard some guesses as to the "C.R. Krieger Satisfaction Rating" of those three? Those who know me well from my years here will have no problems ...

-- C.R. Krieger (Been there; done that)

Lessee...

Close?

-Fred W

Statistical data about non-critical applications (like this) is useful to help you make a decision. If you have a couple of cars that appeal the same to you from a driving dynamic pov, for example - it is nice to know which one is more likely to be reliable and provide more usage enjoyment. But here we are getting into the "interpration" issue I mentioned before.

That's not their goal and anyone that approaches this data this way has no idea what it means.

Having said that - there is no way that anyone can predict what you will like more other than you - including enthusiast media, your buddies at the local car club, people on this board or even your significant other - but we all have practical limits to the amount of time and money we can devote to our decisions and have to use other sources of information in order to help us make a decision. If you take it in this grain - it is a very useful source of information.

Ron.