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"Analyze This: A Physicist on Applied Politics," by Lawrence M. Krauss. New York Times, 21 November 2000.
In this article, a physicist examines the Florida electoral data as if it were data from a scientific experiment. Six million people voted in Florida on election day. "Such a vote normally produces a signal so clear that television networks can discern its nature even before the votes are counted," Krauss writes. "Not this time." Initially, the vote tally for the two presidential candidates differed by only 300 votes, which is not a statistically significant difference. Mathematics tells us that if a new vote were held, "one would not be surprised if the final vote count were to change by up to 10 times this amount." Mathematics and science cannot decide elections. "Nevertheless," Krauss writes, "we can learn from our experience in science about ways to make the final measurement as sound and as significant as possible."
--- Allyn Jackson
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