Arithmetic Grade Five
Lesson One hundred and sixty-three: Polls
Polls are often taken to get an idea of how a group of people feel about
something. Before a big election polls are taken to try to figure out how
the people in a city, state, or nation are going to vote before the actual
election takes place. Sometimes polls ask people how they feel about certain
issues. For instance, suppose that a city is going to build a park and they
have decided that there are three possible locations for the one park. Let's
say that citizens of the city will vote in about a month, but the local news
paper is going to try to get an idea of which location is preferred now. All
the local newspaper has to do is take a poll. Of course, for the results of
their poll to reflect the feelings of the people in the town they will have
to develop some sort of strategy to ensure that they don't just ask people
who have a certain preference. (For instance, if they ask people going into
a supermarket - and this is the only location they use - there is a good
chance that the location closest to the market will be selected since people
who live near the market are likely to shop at that location - unless it
happens to be the only market in town.)
In conducting their poll the news paper might keep a tally like this:
Park Site Preferences:
| LOCATION | TALLY | TOTAL |
| Site One: North end of town near DMV office. |
 |
37 |
| Site Two: Center of town near railroad station. |
 |
16 |
| Site Three: East side of town past several farms. |
|
47 |
Once the poll is complete the newspaper will present the results of their
poll along with an article. They are likely to organize their poll results
into some sort of graph. In this case, we will use a bar graph:
| PARK SITE PREFERENCE |
37
|
16
|
47
|
| Site One |
Site Two |
Site Three |
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