Polling discussion thread

[S485122]

Originally Posted by kriesel

What OS and hardware do you currently (this year) run Gpuowl on? Check all that apply. Responses are not public. Poll will be open until June 24.
"Intel gpu" should be NVIDIA gpu.

No option for "other" ? or "I don't run GPUOwl" ?

Jacob

[kriesel]

Originally Posted by S485122

No option for "other" ? or "I don't run GPUOwl" ?

Jacob

You're kidding, right? There's another poll for what you do run.

[S485122]

Originally Posted by kriesel

You're kidding, right? There's another poll for what you do run.

Sorry but then the poll should be "IF YOU RAN GPUOwl this year, what OS and what GPU did you use ? Check all that apply." of something like that.

You asked everybody, and in different threads, to answer the two polls.

I tried to please you, but one of them has no valid answer for those who do not run GPUOwl, because of the way the poll is formulated.

I understood what you wanted. But I used the occasion to vent my irritation at badly worded polls and the tendency of those who word the questions to think inside their "box", there should always be at least one of the following possibilities : "no answer", "something else" or "not applicable". I could add, that the lack of suitable answers is a ploy often used in political polls, where, at almost each question, I search the page to see if there no possibility of another answer ; - ) And since there is none I am blocked on electronic forms that make the answers mandatory.

In this case a proper formulated question, would have given me the response I should give : not answering.

The mandatory fields problem is also encountered on registration forms for instance, one obvious field that is often mandatory if "mobile number", I have to put a fake number that conforms to the countries mobile numbers pattern, because it will not accept an empty field or another answer indicating that one does not have (and most emphatically refuses)a mobile number... But I digress.

I would add I was not "kidding" !

Jacob

[kriesel]

I'm new to creating polls. It took a while to find how to do it on this forum; it's an option available only when creating a new thread, as far as I can tell. (So a thread containing a collection of polls appears not possible, except as a link list as I did.) Also, if there's a way to edit a poll, such as to correct a misspelling, I don't know how. I may redo this poll later because of certain issues with it.

People criticize me for being too verbose. And for posting incompletely.
Perhaps that means I'm hitting near the middle of the target.
It would not surprise me if someone had an issue with a poll formulated as you describe. Can't please everyone.

Feel free to post the poll you'd like to see. In the form you'd like to see.
Thanks for sharing your perspective, in some detail. I'll consider your input in future polls. I hope you feel better for having had an opportunity to vent.

[kracker]

Originally Posted by S485122

Sorry but then the poll should be "IF YOU RAN GPUOwl this year, what OS and what GPU did you use ? Check all that apply." of something like that.

...why so picky? Sure, maybe the question could have been written more clearly(I think it's fine now though). Maybe if the question doesn't apply to you... just don't vote?

[kriesel]

Originally Posted by S485122

No option for "other" ? or "I don't run GPUOwl" ?

Jacob

MacOS/other OS
other gpu

[Viliam Furik]

Originally Posted by kriesel

What OS and hardware do you currently (this year) run Gpuowl on? Check all that apply. Responses are not public. Poll will be open until June 24.
"Intel gpu" should be NVIDIA gpu.

I didn't notice that message, sorry. One vote for "other gpu" from me should be counted to nVidia gpu.

[M344587487]

Originally Posted by Viliam Furik

I didn't notice that message, sorry. One vote for "other gpu" from me should be counted to nVidia gpu.

In that case funnily enough other GPU should include intel as I think technically the iGPU has good OpenCL support even if the GPU itself is not really fit for purpose.

[Uncwilly]

(re statistics posted for a poll then in progress)

But that is only for forumites that look at your blogorrhea or all new posts during the period and decided to vote. That is a tiny fraction of GIMPS participants. I would suggest that you should raise all vote counts to the 4th power to be closer to the proportion of all GIMPS participants.

[kriesel]

Originally Posted by Uncwilly

But that is only for forumites that look at your blogorrhea or all new posts during the period and decided to vote. That is a tiny fraction of GIMPS participants.

Certainly I'd prefer the response was larger, and as representative of the full recently active GIMPS membership as possible. But like everything else, poll participation is voluntary. The few polls I've created recently have been announced in a polls thread in the Software forum.
Is there a better place or method to announce them?
Consider a few users. One is passionate about GIMPS, has alerts set for new posts in forum threads he follows closely and very frequently, and participates in the forum and GIMPS computations very actively. Another is interested and active in GIMPS and reads the forum frequently. Another is a sometimes participant in GIMPS and rarely reads the forum. Another has only prime95 running, automatically, but is a passive participant, and does not read the forum. Who's most likely to not care much and ignore a poll even if it's open for two months? Whose opinion is most valuable to people deciding how to spend precious programming time?

Political polls often have sample sizes of hundreds or a thousand. That's out of millions to a hundred million plus of potential or likely voters. The responses of likely voters are more significant than of unlikely voters. The population percentages participating in these GIMPS polls are better than those ratios, but the statistical computations are what they are. Political elections weight voters' responses equally. Corporate voting weights responses according to number of shares owned as of the record date. The forum polls weight responses equally.

[Uncwilly]

If you put the polls in the proper forum you don't need a separate thread to announce them.