Re:Which country read the most
by shalmanese on Sunday March 02, 2014 @03:00PM
(#7330514)
It's easy to think that but it's not true. Regardless of population size, providing a sample is truly random, a sample size of 300 is enough to measure with an accuracy of + or - 3%. Increasing sample size much beyond this does not meaningfully increase accuracy.
An analogy I've found useful thinking about this is, if you have a pot of soup, tasting a teaspoon is enough to figure out whether the soup is oversalted or not, regardless of the size of the soup pot, providing the soup is well mixed.
Assuming the set is homogeneous! Which in this case, is not. A sample extracted from a more or less financially stable region of the country will have drastically different output than a sample extracted from a poorer area. Your assumption about 'the soup well mixed' is less probable to be true, given the lack of any evidence supporting the claim that this study is either meaningful or properly executed.
Re:Which country read the most
by shalmanese on Monday March 03, 2014 @04:40AM
(#7332845)
Right, if there's a flaw in the study, it's in the representativeness, not the sample size.
As disappointing as the sample size is (average 1k people per country), more important is the absence of info of where they all come from (pessimism says 1 city). (optimism says 2)
Re:Which country read the most
by thisisnotclear on Sunday March 02, 2014 @07:00AM
(#7328825)
I am from India and I am pretty sure that Indian people are not the best readers in the world.
"The Culture Score Index Series is based on further analysis of the NOP World Roper Reports Worldwide(TM) survey, which includes in-depth personal interviews with more than 30,000 people age 13 and older in 30 countries between December 2004 and February 2005."
This is a relatively minuscule sample compared to India's population which is ~= 1.3Billion in 2004/2005. Same applies for many other countries. The results are not indicative at all.