Not only that but there are likely a large number of people who didn't call because they were just waiting for Apple to make a statement about it. What's the point of calling Apple to troubleshoot your phone when you know they won't have an answer for you. If you called in the past few weeks I'm quite sure it was an uneventful and useless call since we were told to "stand by". Of course the number of calls was low.
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How to Lie(or misled) with statistics
- Thread starter tjtv
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Not only that but there are likely a large number of people who didn't call because they were just waiting for Apple to make a statement about it. What's the point of calling Apple to troubleshoot your phone when you know they won't have an answer for you. If you called in the past few weeks I'm quite sure it was an uneventful and useless call since we were told to "stand by". Of course the number of calls was low.
Sigh. The innumerate are ignorant and they don't even know it.
There are THREE MILLION of these things out in the wild now--600,000 were sold on the FIRST DAY. As a SWAG, call it 1.5 million devices (a guess at the average value in the wild over the considered time period) making calls for 22 days is going to generate a large data set. No, it won't be as large as it is for the 3GS, but it will still be plenty large enough that statistically significant observations can be drawn from it.
What gets harder is drawing individual cases out of the data: dropped calls in congested areas vs. dropped calls in non-congested areas, calls from inside brick/steel buildings vs. outdoors, etc., so that you can control for different variables.
Radio engineering is hard. Signal strength is not constant, and there is a LOT of weirdness (e.g., multipathing) involved.
Agreed, and thank you OP.
I know the .5% is not accurate because Jobs qualified it by saying those were the calls to Applecare. Well, many of us who called, did not call Applecare because we didn't buy it, not seeing it as an advantage when our credit cards extend the warranty another year.
Yes, good points. And many feel the release of a bumper - for the first time, admitted they realized their fault in this new design. So I don't believe that they only knew about the problems 22 days ago. With all their testing, do we believe Apple is that stupid? And of course there is the report that they were advised not to do this.
I am a long time Apple fan, buying products for years. And I appreciate what they tried to do with this version - the picture is beautiful. But this was a huge disappointment. I would have preferred honesty.
I am betting the numbers will be better down the road once people get tired of making youtube videos of themselves intentionally making calls drop to fuel their adolescent rage. What percentage of dropped calls do you think are actually people doing it intentionally? I have had zero dropped calls with mine (and yes, I have tried to make calls drop). On my 3GS I had quite a few.
They couldn't give out the actual number and had to give the "delta" because at&t hides this information from competitors.
I think the OP is missing the point. Even if the 3GS only dropped 1.01 calls, and the ip4 drops 2, I think the point people are trying to make is that is still a very small number in comparision. No matter the %, its still less than 1% of the total calls made (per 100).
Also, this fact that the data is a delta makes you feel like they are hiding something, but if anyone is doing the hiding, it is probably ATT. If ATT gave out that kind of information, then the next thing you would see would be Obama in a Verizon commercial saying how they drop 50% less calls.
Also, this fact that the data is a delta makes you feel like they are hiding something, but if anyone is doing the hiding, it is probably ATT. If ATT gave out that kind of information, then the next thing you would see would be Obama in a Verizon commercial saying how they drop 50% less calls.
The OP is lying and misleading us with his statistics, just like what he is explaining. Statistics are meaningless when you try to manipulate it to either extreme (low or high). The OP did the low extreme approach and a later poster did the high extreme approach. Bottom line is, Apple was and is very fair with their usage of statistics. For example, their notebook battery life is very on par with what they claim. I have consistently gotten ~7 hours of battery life with my MBP that I bought last summer (today's models get 8-9 hours).
The reason why Apple didn't give a clear number of dropped calls for the 3GS and 4 is because they don't want competitors to know. It's not because they wanted to manipulate the statistic. If I was running AT&T, I would not disclose this information to the general public.
The reason why Apple didn't give a clear number of dropped calls for the 3GS and 4 is because they don't want competitors to know. It's not because they wanted to manipulate the statistic. If I was running AT&T, I would not disclose this information to the general public.
hey, idiot, it's properly spelled "mislead."
perhaps you should do a little research...some basic reading...and start a thread aptly entitled, "How to bleeding spell when thou art a dim 'net troll."
cheers!
Congratulations. You just graduated up from "misleading with statistics" to "blatant dishonesty."
We don't know anything of the sort. Somehow you got from 'Steve's statement means that it potentially could drop as many as .99 more per 100' to 'We KNOW it's approximately .99 more per 100.'
He’s trying to do an anti-spin.
They definitely have a statistically valid sample size. It’s all based on what confidence interval and confidence level you need for the population you are sampling. FYI, it’s less than 500 for any meaningful confidence interval and level.