Leading Questions - Yes Prime Minister
Why Hacker News recommends it
HN commenters bring it up whenever a poll or survey result looks suspect, as the classic illustration of biased question framing.
What it is
A clip from Yes Prime Minister in which Sir Humphrey shows how leading questions can make a survey support or oppose national service. It is a short satirical scene.
Recommended by 4 HN commenters across 4 different months, 2012 to 2025.
What Hacker News said
Recommends waterhouse · 2020-08 · on “Gallup: 81% of Black Americans Want Police to Retain Local Presence”
> the questions can shape the response. An excellent illustration of this: [this video] Although in this case, it doesn't look like they had bad intentions and they seem to have dug at least a little below the surface and drawn what seem like sensible conclusions. I wonder if more detailed results and the full list of questions are available somewhere.
Recommends Jalad · 2022-03 · on “Walgreens replaced some fridge doors with screens, and some shoppers hate it”
Link for the curious: [this video] Starts at about 1:00. One of my favorite shows Edit: updated link, thanks @dvngnt_
Recommends roenxi · 2023-02 · on “We are dropping the Dilbert comic because of creator Scott Adams racist rant”
This is probably a good time to recall that polling in politics can be highly misleading . I recall an excellent segment on Yes, Minister that explains it [0, 1]. We really need to know the other questions they were being asked at the time to see if they were primed in some way. A near majority being uncomfortable with white people would be outrageous, but Americans are usually pretty tolerant so it is likely that Rasmussen is playing games here. [0] [this video] [1] [LINK] - For people who like text, search for "Have another opinion poll done"
Recommends graemep · 2024-11 · on “Statistical challenges and misreadings of literature create unreplicable science [pdf]”
Polls may or may not be carried out in a neutral way. A good many are deliberately biased, even more have known flaws that are glossed over. A humorous take on this I love (from the 80s BBC comedy Yes Minister, which is often scarily realistic): [this video]
Cites jacques_chester · 2012-09 · on “How to confuse a moral compass: Survey 'magic trick' causes attitude reversal”
This is different from the classic phenomenon explored in Yes, Prime Minister [1]. It's not that they manipulated the questions in advance -- it's that they reversed the meaning of the questions after the respondent had answered them . Even under these conditions, the majority of respondents were then prepared to support the position which they had, ostensibly, only a few minutes ago opposed and vice versa . Remarkable. [1] [this video]
Cites chriswarbo · 2013-07 · on “Poll shift as public now says War on Terror has gone too far”
"voters say 45 - 40 percent the government's anti-terrorism efforts go too far restricting civil liberties, a reversal from a January 10, 2010, ... when voters said 63 - 25 percent that such activities didn't go far enough to adequately protect the country." The fact that the statement has reversed ("not far enough" -> "too far") rather than the numbers (ie. it's not "63 - 25" -> "40 -> 45") brings to mind this scene from Yes Minister [this video]
Cites gopalv · 2014-06 · on “Social Psychology Is A Flamethrower”
The issue with psychology is that double blind experiments are prone to observer effect. The behaviour often have nothing to do with reality - when measured, everything tends towards the ideal. And the experiments can often result in the results you want if the double blinds are removed. I always fall back onto the Survey from "Yes Minister" to explain how that works [this video]
Cites tareqak · 2017-11 · on “How my third email reminder from HR motivated me to launch my startup”
Taking that humorous example further, you could go down both questions, still have a have a final "Yes" to both questions, but then have a final question to ask which one of the two a particular voter is worried about. e.g. [this video] has a comment with the transscript of the skit HUMPHREY: No. So she starts asking you some questions. Mr Woolley, are you worried about the number of young people without jobs? BERNARD: Yes. HUMPHREY: Are you worried about the rise in crime among teenagers? BERNARD: Yes. HUMPHREY: Do you think there's a lack of discipline in our comprehensive schools?] BERNARD: Yes. HUMPHREY: Do you think young people welcome some authority and leadership in their lives? BERNARD: