about my survey - this should be 4

[larry@lablues.UUCP (Lawrance A. Schneider)]

When I posted my survey about Apple and its computers, a number of
people (MANY) asked that I give them the results.  DONE SO HERE BY!


YES / NO answers were not counted.  Thus, someone answering part of
the survey with 0-9 type of answers and other questions with yes/no
type of answers were removed from the results.  In many cases,
questions about Apple Computer Inc. were answered with negative
numbers (with -infinity being the most emphatic effort); the natural
thing to do would be to assign them the value "0"; however, is a
negative 10 the same as a negative 15?  I received many such replies,
but I felt that if a person could not follow directions, then their
value to the survey was questionable.  I had made a "Mac" survey as
well as one for the "II."  People not indicating which of my surveys
to which they were replying were eliminated as well.  I will say that
the "Mac" results "looked" better for Apple.

I do not in any way want to disparage the worth of those who replied
in such a way; when the topic is Apple Computer Inc., were I to
discount such people, I would be casting out a large number of people;
I just had no way of translating their answers to what I had asked
them to do.  In fact, most of the people who answered with yes/no
entries and those using negative numbers, had the most interesting
comments.  Just to set the record straight, a number of people gave
their Apple IIs larger values than "9," but no one wanted to give a
value larger than "9" to Apple Computer Inc..

This was somewhat problematical in that I really was not concerned
about the answers as such.  I wanted to know the differences between
how people viewed Apple Computer Inc. and how they viewed their Apple
II.  I was also very interested in any comments; but, you will notice
that I place very little emphasis on comments in the actual request
for the survey; I said: "If a question does not apply, DO NOT ANSWER
THE QUESTION!  If you'd like to make a comment, please do so at the
end of the questionnaire.  The idea is to keep bandwidth to a
minimum."  Why keep "bandwidth to a minimum?"  If you had ever been on
an Apple II network or to a meeting of an Apple II user group, you
would know why.  Those like me, who dislike Apple Computer Inc., will
take over the whatever for a considerable length of time; in the case
of user group meeting - hours; in the case of a network - 50% or more
of the daily messages for a week or more.  We are an obnoxious group! 
But are we large in a marketing sense?

I had more than 80 replies to my survey and used only 36 for the
reason outlined above.  I was disappointed with the numbers, but I've
been told that that is a good result.

As you can see, I screwed up the order - SORRY

InterNet: larry@lablues.UUCP
FidoNet:  1:132/300 Larry Schneider

0 ----> Kernel ----> Ring    207=379-3181
           ^         ^   
The         \       /     Larry Schneider 
"Clearly"    \     /      Bright Software
Functor       \   /        P. O. Box 120
commutes        0       Exeter, ME 04435-0120