Apathy Survey
A major survey was recently commissioned to study the level of apathy in Shalampax. According to the couple of people I could be bothered to ask, no one knows or, more accurately, no one cares who commissioned the survey.
The problem with most surveys is that, because only a small random sampling of the population is interviewed, the studies are normally accurate only to a few percent above or below the reported results. However, depending on the sample size, this is typically true only 19 times out of 20. The results may be wildly inaccurate for the other one time out of 20.
The designers of the apathy survey have eliminated this problem. Because the population of Shalampax is only 4,242, it was decided that it would be feasible to interview the entire population, rather than just a random sample. This would totally eliminate the sampling error.
Unfortunately, none of the interviewers who were contracted to conduct the survey could be bothered to go out and question people. And no one was interested enough in the results to bother attempting to convince them to do their jobs. As a result, the apathy survey has been shelved. Big deal. Who cares?
I don’t care.
If you interview the entire population, of course, you’d have a census–not a survey. Maybe that would inspire them!
@MadMadMargo: Who does?
@Patricia: We don’t do censuses. We keep track of who dies and then pick a woman to have a baby and fill in the population gap to keep our population at it’s fixed quota of 4,242.