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22.81% of New Mac Pros have Major problems??

Does 22.81% seem like a high percentage of faulty machines

  • Nope -- perfectly acceptable for a new release.

    Votes: 7 10.1%

  • Maybe now -- but 10.5.2 will likely fix most problems and that number will drop.

    Votes: 21 30.4%

  • Yes -- It seems very high to me.

    Votes: 42 60.9%
  • Total voters
    69
rotflmao

"Never Argue With An idiot. They'll Lower You To Their Level And Then Beat You With Experience!

Yesterday, 11:11 PM #18
MikeL
macrumors regular

Join Date: Jan 2003
Location: Bloomington, MN

What kind of idiot starts a thread like this?"

that is too funny...... :cool:
 
kirkbross said:
No, blah blah blah blah
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The quality of the sample group is more important than the quantity of the sample group. For example, if you wanted to find out how many people in the US owned Macs, but you didn't poll anyone outside of Idaho it wouldn't matter if you poll 100, 1000, or 1,000,000 you will never get an accurate representation of the whole United States by only polling Idaho.


Lethal
 
kirkbross said:
Would it be more accurate with 5,000 respondents was a rhetorical question. Sorry, but a higher number of respondents in any kind of poll always increases accuracy. It's simple math.
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It may increase accuracy, but not necessarily of the question you are seeking to answer. We would need to take random samples of Mac users, see how many have problems, compare this a number of polls on the website in question, determine the probability of someone with a problem computer responding to such a poll versus someone without.

Since we have done no such normalisation the poll effectively has a SD of infinity thus higher numbers have no effect on accuracy to the thread question.
 
macgruder said:
It may increase accuracy, but not necessarily of the question you are seeking to answer. We would need to take random samples of Mac users, see how many have problems, compare this a number of polls on the website in question, determine the probability of someone with a problem computer responding to such a poll versus someone without.

Since we have done no such normalisation the poll effectively has a SD of infinity thus higher numbers have no effect on accuracy to the thread question.
Click to expand...

It would increase the reliability of the poll, but NOT the validity.
 
Reach said:
It would increase the reliability of the poll, but NOT the validity.
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Exactly :)

Quote Wikipedia:
That is, a reliable measure is measuring something consistently, but not necessarily what it is supposed to be measuring.

Quote me :)
It may increase accuracy, but not necessarily of the question you are seeking to answer.

Of course, coincidently 22.81% of Wikipedia sentences are inaccurate according to a poll :)
 
Poll results are basically meaningless

Hi all,

I am a professor in psychology and statistics. It has been quite refreshing for me to see that the majority of people on this board *understand* sampling and statistics! Lone Wolf and several others are correct. The most important aspect of obtaining an accurate measure is *not* the sample size (which decreases the sampling variability) but rather whether the sample was collected at random in the population - i.e., such that (as close as possible), everyone in the population which you wish to generalize to had an equal probability of being selected.

When pollsters say that a given candidate has 54% approval +/- 3%, the 3% is *sampling variability* - it is taken as a *given* that the poll was conducted randomly (and there are entire degrees granted on how to approximate this as closely as possible). If for some reason the poll was not random, the poll might be off by 5, 10, 20, 40... you name it... percent. The 3% doesn't give us any information about this.

As many others have said, the mac pro poll was not a random sample of all new mac pro owners, and thus its results cannot be generalized to all new mac pro owners. It is truly impossible to say how accurate it is, regardless of the sample size.

It is heartening to see that folks on this board seem to understand these points!
 
netdog said:
The Leopard Sleep->Restart issue aside (one that will be fixed in no time), 22% of Mac Pros don't have major problems. That's just dumb.
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I'll believe it when I see it. I had this issue with a dual 2.0 G5, first revision. There was apparently a problem with the power supplies in some early G5s I was told. Then a few years later I'm on a dual 2.7 G5 and still having the same issues. I've installed at least 2 or 3 updates that claimed to fix these problems, but they didn't.
 
Maddler said:
I'll believe it when I see it. I had this issue with a dual 2.0 G5, first revision. There was apparently a problem with the power supplies in some early G5s I was told. Then a few years later I'm on a dual 2.7 G5 and still having the same issues. I've installed at least 2 or 3 updates that claimed to fix these problems, but they didn't.
Click to expand...


Ahhh, yes the infamous 'chirping'. It was annoying, but did not effect the usefulness of the machine.
 
LethalWolfe said:
...The quality of the sample group is more important than the quantity of the sample group...l
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This poll (nor flyingscott's I believe) was never meant to be scientific, but it does indicate something to me, personally. I "feel" like this release of the Mac Pro has had more problems than the first Mac Pro in 2006. I simply want to know how other people "feel" about the results of flyingscott's poll.

But speaking of "accurate, large, real, random sample polls" -- how would one go about creating a poll like that?
 
kirkbross said:
This poll (nor flyingscott's I believe) was never meant to be scientific, but it does indicate something to me, personally. I "feel" like this release of the Mac Pro has had more problems than the first Mac Pro in 2006. I simply want to know how other people "feel" about the results of flyingscott's poll.
Click to expand...

I wasn't paying attention to the MP in 2006, so I can't compare it, but I think some people on this site tend to blow things out of proportion. Is a bad hard drive a "major" problem? I would say no. That's not even Apple's fault. Is the "deep sleep" a major problem? Long term, I would say yes, but while you're trying to figure it out what is happening, just don't put the computer to sleep. Turn it off or leave it on. It only takes 20 seconds to boot in the morning. At least mine does.

Apple, or any other company, can't possibly test a machine in every way it will be used/configured with every piece of software. You take somewhat of a chance by purchasing bleeding-edge technology and you have to be prepared to wait a month or so to work out the bugs. If February ends and there are still the same problems, I could see that being a bigger deal. I guess I would feel a little differently if I was having problems with my 2.8 octo, but I'm not.
 
It should be 100% because Apple made this thing too heavy. It's 50lbs for pete sakes.

Seriously, if I had one gripe it would be the internal speakers. It's wasted on the Mac pro. It sounds like $10 Labtecs you can get. Why bother putting such a mid-range speaker for system notification beeps? Even the MBP speakers sound better than this.
 
kirkbross said:
This poll (nor flyingscott's I believe) was never meant to be scientific, but it does indicate something to me, personally. I "feel" like this release of the Mac Pro has had more problems than the first Mac Pro in 2006. I simply want to know how other people "feel" about the results of flyingscott's poll.

But speaking of "accurate, large, real, random sample polls" -- how would one go about creating a poll like that?
Click to expand...

Here, go buy! :)
http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_ss_gw/103-0603840-9992658?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=quantitative+research&x=0&y=0
 
As an Amazon Associate, MacRumors earns a commission from qualifying purchases made through links in this post.
An accurate poll will never be done and Apple will never concede unless it's to the level of a major recall. So, all we have are Macrumor polls. I feel like it's literally a toss as to whether you'll get a machine with freezing, sleeping or some of the other problems people not here.
 
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