Can't help but think about this a bit differently in light of Tim Ewing's wonderful Poptimist column up on Pitchfork today. Choice passage: "In my day job-- as a market researcher-- I work with aggregate data a lot, and I've become increasingly fascinated by the emotional impact of data: the ways people take it personally. When people find out, for instance, that TV ratings are based on taking the viewing habits of around 25,000 households and using them to represent hundreds of millions, they often get very angry. Statistically speaking of course the numbers are absolutely sound-- if the panel is representative, then the data will be accurate to within a tiny interval. That 'if' is quite a big one, but people's anger isn't really based on the misapplication of sampling theory, it's based on the fact that most likely neither they nor anyone they know are a Nielsen household, so of course the data can't be right. "This is an example of what Internet commentator Paul Ford identified, in a terrific essay, as the axis of the web, the question it has evolved to answer: 'Why wasn't I consulted?' It's the reaction that flares up every time there's an Apple product announcement, or a big movie release, or a Top 100 albums list. Being consulted turns out to be a need-- on level three or four of Maslow I don't doubt-- that motivates people to proclaim and pontificate even when their level of basic knowledge, let alone expertise, might suggest they keep quiet." Link: http://pitchfork.com/features/poptimist/7933-poptimist-36/