Most people have no clue just how subjective polls are.During election season we are bombarded with hundreds of different poll results.  Statistical jargon such as “margin of error” or “sample” are bandied about, but most people really don’t know what any of it means.Confusion over the meaning and subjectivity of polls is rooted in our educational system and the lack of critical thinking in our society. A greater emphasis can be placed on statistics training in early high school and undergraduate classes to educate us, but our lack of critical thinking is a far greater concern.Major news organizations and even smaller local organizations love to throw a short poll on their Web sites to gather feedback that can be quickly and easily reported to their audience.University students that have had classes in the massive Cox Auditorium are even polled almost daily through the “clickers” they are required to buy.In this age of instant information, polls are becoming a ubiquitous part of life. We have more information than many ever dreamed possible — but we need to question the quality of our information.Polls in particular are incredibly subjective.To some degree they should be subjective — their goal is to gauge public opinion and report it back quickly and accurately. But that doesn’t mean they are infallible.The construction of poll questions, who is polled and the presentation of poll data can greatly influence the way results are interpreted.Questions used by pollsters aren’t haphazardly thrown together by interns.  Poll questions are fashioned to gather very particular information — the wording of a question is just as important as the information it seeks. No one should accept poll data that does not publish the questions asked within clicking or viewing distance of the results.The sample of people polled is equally important. Before accepting poll data as fact we should ask how their sample — the group of people that the information comes from — was collected and how many people actually responded to the poll.Some polls perform random phone surveys, some use physical questionnaires and some are just Internet polls. Collecting data in different ways can skew results in different ways. For example, as the number of land phone lines in the U.S. dwindles, the characteristics of people with land lines becomes refined. Therefore phone surveys may only tap into a certain part of the population.Furthermore, the number of people responding to the poll is just as important. Ideally speaking, the larger the poll the more easily generalized — how well it compares to the general population — it is.  But it’s also important to know how many people actually responded to the poll out of the people that were offered the poll.The actual presentation of the data is also incredibly important. CNN does slap a “4 percent margin of error” at the bottom of their charts, but that only underscores the fact that these polls are not 100 percent accurate.News organizations present poll data as though it represents the entire American population.  In theory the data can be generalized to the population, but in actuality the data only represents the people polled and no one else.Those are just three examples of the way polls are subjective. But the fact that many people don’t understand these issues or ask these questions immediately when presented with poll data speaks volumes about our nation’s math education and reliance on second-hand data.The knowledge one needs to critique a poll is taught in every introductory level statistics course and should come with common sense.Sadly many students — both in high school and in universities — get through their education without taking a single statistics course. I didn’t take a single statistics course until I started my graduate education, and I absolutely regret it. But there’s a problem with merely educating people.  Requiring students to take a stats course is not enough and only gives them the tools to critique — it cannot instill the desire to be a skeptic.We are presented with so much information on a daily basis that we must become skeptics. We can take nothing for granted, not even information.I have in no way questioned the methodology of most major polling organizations.  For the most part they are honest with their methods, and they present the data they have collected. They are doing their job.Our job is to use our education and critical thinking ability to question the results and ask if they are truly meaningful.Education is a good step, but we must learn to critically examine the information we are presented with, lest we fall deeper into the abyss of blindly accepted information.—-Contact Skylar Gremillion at [email protected]