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Polls, Damned Polls, and Statistics

Dr. Munr Kazmir
4 min readAug 31, 2024

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Polling has become unreliable over the past few election cycles. Will 2024 be any different?

(Photo: Denisse Alarcon)

It’s a basic fact of life, universally acknowledged in the modern age, that polls cost money. Quite a bit of money, as it happens.

Expensive as they are, polls are intended and often requisitioned to add value to a company’s bottom line.

Polls don’t exist purely for the sake of knowledge.

Want to know why the latest corporate product launch just fell flat on its billion-dollar face? Polling customers, soliciting feedback, focus groups, and other similar crowd-sourcing methods are ideal for getting things back on track to profitability.

Take the classic corporate Cinderella story of Febreze.

Proctor & Gamble, that huge multinational conglomerate and household name, went all in developing Febreze. Executives knew they had a winner.

In Febreze, P&G scientists gave the company a brand new weapon in its unmatched arsenal of cleaning potions, powders, and gels. Febreze is much more than an average air freshener.

The patented Febreze formula was designed to bind directly to the particulates that create smells — cleaning the air. The scientists were giddy; the executives were giddily counting stock options.

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