2D polls?

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1

Is there any way to make the board software support “2D” polls? Anyone want to take this on as a project, maybe on one of the SDMB spin-off boards first? I’ve never actually come across this online, but being able to observe correlations is wayyyy more interesting than populating a single biased distribution.

As a simple example, consider this poll:

**Select your age range:
a) 0-10
b) 11-15
c) 16-21
d) 22-30
e) 31-45
f) 46-60
g) 60+

Do you own a car?
a) yes
b) no
**

The second question on its own is useless. There will be some ratio of “yes” to “no”, but there’s no way to control for anything of interest. With the first question answered at the same time, we would get a sense of when people start buying cars. Of course, this is a silly example. One could think of countless correlations of interest.

Certainly, you can’t control for everything with only two variables, but you can do so much more with two than you can with just one.

The data would be presented as a matrix of numbers (totals and/or percentages), in analogy with the bar graphs for the one-variable polls.

Anyway, I think that’d be pretty fun to have.

2

Well, there’s always this hack:

a) 0-10 yes
b) 11-15 yes
c) 16-21 yes
d) 22-30 yes
e) 31-45 yes
f) 46-60 yes
g) 60+ yes
h) 0-10 no
i) 11-15 no
j) 16-21 no
k) 22-30 no
l) 31-45 no
m) 46-60 no
n) 60+ no

That said, I like the “2D Poll” idea.

3

Another vote for “like the idea.”

4

I don’t think V Bulletin offers this type of polling, which would make the answer “no,” since Jerry is reluctant to load hacks.

5

Every time I’ve tried to put 2 or more Q’s into one poll, some people will invariably goof it up.

6

I did this once by using a poll where you can have mutiple answers, so:

a) 0-10
b) 11-15
c) 16-21
d) 22-30
e) 31-45
f) 46-60
g) 60+
h) yes, I have a car
i) no, I don’t

It takes a little trust in the masses…

7

[carnac]

I hold in my hand the last envelope.

Answer: 2D polls.
Question:

Where are Canadians headed today?

[/carnac]

8

golf clap

9

But that doesn’t graph the two variables against each other.

10

No, that requires looking at the poll results (w/ a public poll, so you can see who voted for what) and then importing to Excel using text to columns or some such.