(1) The laws of probability are such that large sample sizes are not necessary to accurately represent a large population. It is true, the more diverse the sample size, the larger the sample size needs to be to ensure representatives from all of the population’s sub-groups. In the U.S., for example, sample sizes of about 800-1,000 routinely predict with great accuracy things like election outcomes (the 2000 presidential election being an exception, of course). And that’s in a population of 300,000,000 (though maybe only 100,000,000 voters). In any case, for India’s 1.2 billion people, I think the previous estimate by Alex may be a little on the high side. The point is, a strikingly small number of people, randomly chosen, can quite easily be representative of a large population (there will always be individual exceptions).

(2) The bigger problem with the survey is that it was probably done using a technique called “random digit dialing.” This means that a computer randomly dials phone numbers. Even if the numbers randomly dialed included mobiles, the survey would reach a quite unique segment of the Indian population. If this is the case, the survey results are not at all representative of the 600 million Indians (that’s a guess) who have no mobiles.

Also some of the figures quoted in the article is too exuberent.

I recently posted on what could go wrong in China from a macroeconomic perspective, linking over to DiligenceChina blog. We got some good feedback from readers here, especially the wise comment by Mr. Li, but I want to highlight a…

“Now at last, riding on a new surge of confidence at home and overseas, Indians have ditched austerity, the spinning wheel and the Mahatma and are spending it up like maharajas. In a recent survey, 90 percent of them cheerfully admitted that they spend their disposable income on non-essentials.”

>>> He fails to understand that Mahatma’s struggle was to make India free hence encourging austerity and take up spinning to avoid imports from Britain.

>>> Is the figure of 90 percent a true representation of all of India being cheerful or just the middle classes?

AJ

BTW- Val MacQueen has also got his understanding on Gandhi so completely wrong. Wish he had done some serious research into the freedom movement and Gandhi’s writings before coming up with a lot of mush. His observation that consumer complaints were ignored in the earlier era following MKG’s call for self-reliance, is inaccurate. Sure, consumer interests were ignored, but to ascribe that to Gandhian philosophy is plain wrong. Also, I find it quite amusing that the most customer oriented message that hangs in almost all PSUs and nationalised banks and is quoted elsewhere is one that was drafted by Gandhi!