Surveys

Lyric by Larry Lesser
may sing to the tune of "The Waiting" by Tom Petty

Oh friends, don’t it feel like average right now?
Don’t it feel like a nuanced kind of mean,
When subgroup size contributes, too--
Could comparisons flip, depending on the weights?
Oh, we know better than to try and tempt fate
Well, no one could have ever told me ‘bout this....

CHORUS: I said, hey, yeah (hey, yeah), yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
The weighting is the hardest part: every day, you make one more chart.
You’re workin’ out the stats, it’s science and an art:
The weighting is the hardest part!

Well, yeah, I might adjust the polling data I found,
Takin’ sex, age, and race into account,
Yeah, then there's your region and how much school:
To better reflect the group drawn from
Oh, this only shows my propensity how
To match up the scores like I wanna do now..... (Repeat CHORUS)

BRIDGE: Oh nonconstant variance -- don't let it get to you,
Nonconstant variance -- don't let it get to you.
Weighted regression -- the tool that you can do;
Outliers don’t get far ‘cause you gave less weight to!

(Repeat CHORUS)

Yeah, the weighting is the smartest part!