[QUOTE=ATH;425114][URL]http://www.marketwatch.com/story/coin-toss-broke-6-clinton-sanders-deadlocks-in-iowa-and-hillary-won-each-time-2016-02-02[/URL]

[URL]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ONP9oKpyjQ4[/URL]

For someone outside the US this is indeed WTF?!? These deadlocks was like 34-34 and 29-29, is it communities so small there are so few voters? or is it some sort of council voting?

Seems strange there are so many places with an even number of voters and the chance of it being exactly deadlocked in so many places seems really remote.[/QUOTE]
[URL="http://www.npr.org/2016/02/02/465268206/coin-toss-fact-check-no-coin-flips-did-not-win-iowa-for-hillary-clinton"]Not so[/URL], on the Marketwatch story. NPR cites it in the "six sites" link. I have seen another debunking article, but I can't lay hand on it at the moment. I think it blamed really bad reporting, but I don't remember the details.
[QUOTE]It's been reported that there were [URL="http://www.marketwatch.com/story/coin-toss-broke-6-clinton-sanders-deadlocks-in-iowa-and-hillary-won-each-time-2016-02-02"]as many as six sites[/URL] where ties were decided by the flip of a coin — and Clinton won every single one. The odds of that happening are 1 in 64, or less than 2 percent. What's more, that gave her just slightly more than her margin of victory over Sanders — four delegates.
Things that make you go hmm. Indeed.
.......
Except that doesn't tell the whole story. In fact, [B]there were at least a dozen tiebreakers — and "Sen. Sanders won at least a handful,"[/B] an Iowa Democratic Party official told NPR.
Gone unmentioned so far is that [B]even if Clinton won that Miracle Six — and there were no other coin tosses — it would make little difference[/B] in the outcome.[/QUOTE]

Edit: Yes, those precincts can be that small. There are some really small towns, and lots of rural area in Iowa. Then too, turnout wasn't that great on the Democratic side.

[QUOTE=kladner;425117]Edit: Yes, those precincts can be that small. There are some really small towns, and lots of rural area in Iowa. Then too, turnout wasn't that great on the Democratic side.[/QUOTE]

Just to put this out there... Your election process seems REALLY strange to outsiders.

[QUOTE=chalsall;425119]Just to put this out there... Your election process seems REALLY strange to outsiders.[/QUOTE]

Caucus states are pretty strange, even to me. They seem tailor-made for party machine politics.

[QUOTE=kladner;425121]Caucus states are pretty strange, even to me. They seem tailor-made for party machine politics.[/QUOTE]

OK. I found [URL="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/02/01/making-sense-of-the-iowa-caucuses/"]this article[/URL] interesting.

[QUOTE=chalsall;425126]OK. I found [URL="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/02/01/making-sense-of-the-iowa-caucuses/"]this article[/URL] interesting.[/QUOTE]
Indeed. As far as my previous comment goes, I guess it could also be said that primaries are just another party machine tool.

[QUOTE=kladner;425136]Indeed. As far as my previous comment goes, I guess it could also be said that primaries are just another party machine tool.[/QUOTE]

OK. Thanks. And I am truly simply trying to figure out your system.

I found [URL="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_primary"]this Wikipedia[/URL] article interesting.

For example: "This process was never included in the United States Constitution; it was created over time by the political parties.

[QUOTE=ATH;425114]Seems strange there are so many places with an even number of voters and the chance of it being exactly deadlocked in so many places seems really remote.[/QUOTE]
You didn't watch the last episodes of "The Good Wife", did you? (google Peter Florrick for president). SWMBO is kicking my butt every monday to swarm all the torrents around the globe to bring her every episode, just one day after airing. We didn't miss any, and for a while I really liked the show, right now is a bit boring, and it is getting worse. But I learned a lot of things, including how those little voting towns in Iowa kick the new presidents into the orbit... :smile:

New South Wales
 

[URL="http://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2016/feb/18/human-legs-found-dumped-with-other-hospital-waste-in-tip-near-newcastle"]Human legs found dumped with other hospital waste[/URL] in tip near Newcastle
[QUOTE]
Two human legs that were removed during a surgery have been found in a waste dump near Newcastle in [URL="http://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/new-south-wales"]New South Wales[/URL], police have confirmed.

A man working at a waste management centre in Wallsend found the legs sticking out of a pile of garbage on Tuesday afternoon, according to police.
[/QUOTE]

Where's Waldo? I don't see any legs. :yucky:

One of the students at the community college right across the street from my favorite local Java Joint just came into the place and plunked several typically-overlarge, surely wildly overpriced textbooks down on a vacant table. I happened to catch the title of one of the texts, it is

"Precalculus with Limits and Enhanced Web Assign"

Did they perhaps intend Web [b]De[/b]sign? And in either case, WTF does that mish-mash of disparate subjects even mean? [If I had to guess I'd surmise that it sounds like a 'unique niche' marketing angle for the crowded undergraduate-texts market. "See, these other texts all have a fine treatment of Precalculus with Limits, but none of them properly combine it with Web Design, erm I mean Web Assign, as Leibniz did way back in the day."]

[QUOTE=ewmayer;426741]One of the students at the community college right across the street from my favorite local Java Joint just came into the place and plunked several typically-overlarge, surely wildly overpriced textbooks down on a vacant table. I happened to catch the title of one of the texts, it is

"Precalculus with Limits and Enhanced Web Assign"

Did they perhaps intend Web [b]De[/b]sign? And in either case, WTF does that mish-mash of disparate subjects even mean? [If I had to guess I'd surmise that it sounds like a 'unique niche' marketing angle for the crowded undergraduate-texts market. "See, these other texts all have a fine treatment of Precalculus with Limits, but none of them properly combine it with Web Design, erm I mean Web Assign, as Leibniz did way back in the day."][/QUOTE]

based on a few searches it may be to go along with [url]https://webassign.com/[/url] with the https scratched out.

[QUOTE=ewmayer;426741]One of the students at the community college right across the street from my favorite local Java Joint just came into the place and plunked several typically-overlarge, surely wildly overpriced textbooks down on a vacant table. I happened to catch the title of one of the texts, it is

"Precalculus with Limits and Enhanced Web Assign"

Did they perhaps intend Web [b]De[/b]sign? And in either case, WTF does that mish-mash of disparate subjects even mean? [If I had to guess I'd surmise that it sounds like a 'unique niche' marketing angle for the crowded undergraduate-texts market. "See, these other texts all have a fine treatment of Precalculus with Limits, but none of them properly combine it with Web Design, erm I mean Web Assign, as Leibniz did way back in the day."][/QUOTE]

[QUOTE=science_man_88;426742]based on a few searches it may be to go along with [url]https://webassign.com/[/url] with the https scratched out.[/QUOTE]

This second suggestion is far more plausible. It's a well known tactic among colleges/professors to, instead of buying just a textbook, require that students buy a textbook that comes with a unique key to an online homework/administration website. That way not only are the students forced to buy physical copies of the textbook, which most otherwise wouldn't, but they are also forced to pay a second time (sometimes almost as much again as the overpriced book) to get the web access. Quite a scam really.