A statistician on Wisconsin

Wm M Briggs, Statistician:

In Wisconsin, they gave Excel spreadsheets to precincts to fill out. The precincts were not supposed to meddle with the spreadsheets except to input data, after which they were to return the spreadsheets to headquarters where they would be read into an Access database. The process was done by hand at each level.

Naturally, some people could not help themselves and added extraneous columns and data into the spreadsheets. This always happens. If you have explicit instructions that the data in a cell can only, under penalty of torture, be coded “Y” or “N”, there will always be found someone who will write “Y but only because…” or “Not sure” or God knows what.

The creativity of humans in lousing up instructions is infinite. So it is no surprise, none whatsoever, that errors were made in Wisconsin, especially in the heat of battle and by clerks anxious to release results to the media.

It is recommended that the interested reader, and those otherwise requiring insight into the issues of statistics, data collection, and the national media, should peruse the entire contents.