When reading "Sense and Nonsense about surveys" By Howard Shuman I came across a lot of new information I wasn't aware of. The article starts off by saying that learning about ones environment by examining a small part of it as a method to take a survey. It goes on to talk about the infamous story of the literary digest poll prediction. Based on 10 million questionnaires and more than 2 million received it came to the conclusion that Theadore Roosevelt will lose by a landslide in the 1936 presidential election. However , George Gallup used fewer cases but a more effective method and came to the conclusion that Roosevelt will in fact win the presidential election. Gallup chose respondents that represented different economic statuses while literary digest just used names from an automobile ownership list. You would think that since literary digest got more than 2 million questionnaires back that they would know who would win the election but that wasn't the case.

       With that survey Galloped reached fame. In the 1930s and 1940s there was significant improvements in the sampling process and allowed the modern survey to develop and flourish. I found this very interesting because one man revolutionized the art of modern surveys. Surveys could be used to determine anything. For example in the text "Experience Sociology" it talks about Diego Vigil who studied Chicano gangs in 1996. He learned that a prospect of new comer would routinely be attacked and beaten by several gang members at the same time. he referred to this as "street baptism". He claimed it gave the rest of the gang members a sense of the prospects fighting skills and it promoted gang solidarity. From Gallop in 1936 to Vigil in 1996 the same methods are used to conduce research and surveys. As you can see surveys could predict the outcome of an event as important as the presidential election and could be used to conduce research on a petty gang.