Re: Federal Jury Duty Form

1

Show the extent of your education about grade school

Typo (s/b "above") or that's what the form really says?


Posted by: urple | Link to this comment | 05-20-11 10:10 AM
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Yes, No, Yes. Unless you've also been to a trade school. (I'm assuming 'about' is meant to be 'above', if 'about is correct then I have no idea.)


Posted by: teraz kurwa my | Link to this comment | 05-20-11 10:11 AM
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3

Above high school, presumably. Though perhaps if you haven't done a pedagogy course you should say "no" to all of them.


Posted by: Ginger Yellow | Link to this comment | 05-20-11 10:11 AM
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4

Oh, yes. I'll change that.


Posted by: heebie-geebie | Link to this comment | 05-20-11 10:11 AM
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5

Everybody go witness that it currently says "above", so that if it changes back I'll have witnesses.


Posted by: heebie-geebie | Link to this comment | 05-20-11 10:12 AM
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6

I assume I just jinxed it though.


Posted by: heebie-geebie | Link to this comment | 05-20-11 10:12 AM
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7

I think law school entitles me to say "Yes" to all three.


Posted by: LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 05-20-11 10:12 AM
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8

2 is what I'd put as well. Where's the confusion?


Posted by: Stanley | Link to this comment | 05-20-11 10:14 AM
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9

You're all backing Jammies. I was arguing vigorously for No, No, Yes.

My case went that they want to know the extent, as in "What's the furthest you got?"


Posted by: heebie-geebie | Link to this comment | 05-20-11 10:17 AM
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It's a poorly written question, so I can understand why you'd think they really want to know what you're saying in 9, and it sucks that you have to guess at it, but I think Stanley gets it with 8. They probably have someone coding these yes/no responses in a database, so they can know what percentage of their pool has a hs degree, a trade school degree, etc. If everyone answered like you suggest in 9, it would appear in the data as if a bunch of people did something beyond h.s. w/o graduating from h.s. (or getting a g.e.d.)

The real dilemma is how you're supposed to answer this if you didn't even complete grade school. No/No/No is the best you could do, but it's based on incorrect premises.


Posted by: urple | Link to this comment | 05-20-11 10:21 AM
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9: To get all mathy (and thus probably be wrong), if a line segment extends from A to B to C, it doesn't extend to B?


Posted by: Stanley | Link to this comment | 05-20-11 10:21 AM
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9: In that case, blank, blank, no is what a pragmatic, right-thinking person would do. Fuck fucking precedents. And that is what I would put, although I can see the case for yes, no, yes for a non-trade schooler.


Posted by: JP Stormcrow | Link to this comment | 05-20-11 10:22 AM
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13

I had the same reaction as heebie.


Posted by: nosflow | Link to this comment | 05-20-11 10:27 AM
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My case went that they want to know the extent, as in "What's the furthest you got?"

If this were true, what purpose would the "no" column serve?



Posted by: urple | Link to this comment | 05-20-11 10:29 AM
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If you walked from your house through the plains, through the forest, and into the mountains, and someone asked you if you got as far as the forest, wouldn't that be yes? Yes, I got to the forest, and I went beyond to the mountains.


Posted by: AWB | Link to this comment | 05-20-11 10:31 AM
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16

Show the extent of your travels

Through the plains Yes____ No____
Through the forest Yes____ No____
Into the mountains Yes____ No____


Posted by: | Link to this comment | 05-20-11 10:33 AM
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17

If it were an A B C choose one type question then you might be right, but as it is you're saying that if you went to college you have to answer that you didn't graduate from high school.


Posted by: teraz kurwa my | Link to this comment | 05-20-11 10:33 AM
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I might have interpreted it Heebie's way, if it weren't for 'trade school'. Trade school isn't a step on the grade-school to high-school to college route, it's a separate thing. So that needs it's own yes or no answer regardless, which means that all of the questions should be yes or no literally, not yes for the highest level attained and no for everything else.


Posted by: LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 05-20-11 10:36 AM
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"What's the furthest you got?"

I've only recently been made aware that some people nitpick on the further/farther distinction, and I'm never sure what's Correct in these not-actual-physical-distance cases. Stupid prescriptivism.


Posted by: Stanley | Link to this comment | 05-20-11 10:36 AM
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If I make some statement and then say "but that's the extent of my knowledge about that", I mean that that's all I know about it; my knowledge goes no further.

It should still be multiple choice, though, since the yes/no thing invites you to misunderstand what's being asked.


Posted by: DonBoy | Link to this comment | 05-20-11 10:38 AM
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18: Show the extent of your education above grade school

High school/GED equivalent Yes____ No____
Some CollegeYes____ No____
4-yr College Degree (or equivalent) Yes____ No____
Graduate or Professional degree Yes____ No____


You really think "No, No, No, Yes" is correct?


Posted by: urple | Link to this comment | 05-20-11 10:40 AM
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22

Heebie--is there a number on the form anywhere, that you could call and ask how to interpret this question?


Posted by: urple | Link to this comment | 05-20-11 10:42 AM
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23

Jury duty form? You better get this right under penalty of perjury, then.


Posted by: neil | Link to this comment | 05-20-11 10:46 AM
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24

I've only recently been made aware that some people nitpick on the further/farther distinction, and I'm never sure what's Correct in these not-actual-physical-distance cases.

IIRC, etymologically "further" is the original term and "farther" is a back-formation from "far" (after English lost the last vestiges of ablaut), so I'd say any attempt to impose a prescriptive distinction between the two synchronically is exceptionally silly even compared to other prescriptivist rules.


Posted by: teofilo | Link to this comment | 05-20-11 11:01 AM
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22 is joke, right? Sorry, urple, I'm sometimes not sure with you.


Posted by: JP Stormcrow | Link to this comment | 05-20-11 11:01 AM
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26

If this were true, what purpose would the "no" column serve?

That some pencil-pusher had been asked to design this form using only yes/no answers.


Posted by: heebie-geebie | Link to this comment | 05-20-11 11:07 AM
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26: Yes. Which is why blanks are on form of right answer. Actually I think the "rightest" answer is to leave the whole questionl blank. If you indulge these fuckers by trying to puzzle out a logical response the terrorists have won.


Posted by: JP Stormcrow | Link to this comment | 05-20-11 11:16 AM
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If you attach a 500-word essay about the ambiguous nature of the question, I think there's a good chance that you will never hear from them again.


Posted by: neil | Link to this comment | 05-20-11 11:19 AM
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I think law school entitles me to say "Yes" to all three. "Nooooooooooooooo!"

Fixed.


Posted by: Flippanter | Link to this comment | 05-20-11 11:22 AM
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30

The one time I got called for a jury duty pool (meaning, I went for the initial thing and then they said they'd call me the day before if they needed me, and then they called a few days later) I accidentally overslept and never heard from them again. I presume this egregious error went down on my Permanent Record.


Posted by: Stanley | Link to this comment | 05-20-11 11:26 AM
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30: I just ignored a summons a few times and they sent someone to my house to deliver it in person. I was impressed (and apologize for wasting everyone's tax dollars).


Posted by: JP Stormcrow | Link to this comment | 05-20-11 11:32 AM
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I just ignored a summons a few times and they sent someone to my house to deliver it in person.

The Runaway Juror: I see Kate Hudson/Katherine Heigl/Rachel McAdams as the reluctant citoyenne, some clean-cut 42 Long as the summons clerk, William Shatner as the judge who tells the boyish, bashful suit to "Get that girl back in my jury box!"


Posted by: Flippanter | Link to this comment | 05-20-11 12:00 PM
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I just faced this very same problem not fifteen minutes ago. I went with yes, no, yes. The reasoning in 9 (and in 7 and 12) occurred to me as well, but surely it is not how they expect the question to be answered.

I had to call the jury office because of something else screwy in my mailing (which turned out to have been a mistake on their part) and I was seriously tempted to have a discussion about this. But I could tell that it would not end in comity.


Posted by: potchkeh | Link to this comment | 05-20-11 12:12 PM
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34

DJ Pauly in the house, yo! I am dropping it as if it were uncomfortably warm! I think!


Posted by: Pauly Shore | Link to this comment | 05-20-11 1:41 PM
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You guys are insane. These are mutually-exclusive choices, otherwise the data is garbage. You mark the highest one. For a person with a college degree, that's No, No, Yes.

I've done about nine million of these, including much better worded ones on surveys I wrote myself, and never ever has it not been a forced-choice, mutually-exclusive-answers kind of a deal.


Posted by: Witt | Link to this comment | 05-20-11 1:57 PM
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36

You guys are insane.

That doesn't strke you from the jury pool.


Posted by: Moby Hick | Link to this comment | 05-20-11 2:00 PM
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37

Recently, I saw an exam question worded as follows:

"In a flow chart, an if/then decision structure is represented with a____":

a) Parallelogram.
b) Square.
c) Diamond.


Posted by: Criminally Bulgur | Link to this comment | 05-20-11 2:07 PM
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38

I have had trouble figuring out how to fill out a jury form where one question says "can you speak, read, and understand English" and a different question says "do you need any accommodations for a disability". I think I said yes for the first one and also yes (and wrote in ASL interpreter) for the second one, but I really wasn't sure if that was right or not.


Posted by: E. Messily | Link to this comment | 05-20-11 2:16 PM
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39

You guys are insane.

4sd out on neurosis. And public schools arent changing AT ALL to solve the problem, which explains the jury.


Posted by: lw | Link to this comment | 05-20-11 2:21 PM
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40

These are mutually-exclusive choices, otherwise the data is garbage.

What? Why?


Posted by: Sifu Tweety | Link to this comment | 05-20-11 2:24 PM
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40: You want to know how educated a pool of people you're drawing from. If you want to be able to make a pie chart that shows (for example) 5% have less than HS, 40% have a HS degree, 20% have some college, and 35% have a bachelor's or higher, you can't have the bachelor's people showing up in your HS stats too, because then they're getting double-counted.


Posted by: Witt | Link to this comment | 05-20-11 2:33 PM
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42

But you could fix it with subtraction (aside from the trade school problem. I'm not sure if trade school is an alternative to high school, college, or is compatible with both or either).


Posted by: LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 05-20-11 2:40 PM
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43

Yeah it would really not be at all complicated to fix the data.


Posted by: Sifu Tweety | Link to this comment | 05-20-11 2:44 PM
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44

You can only fix it with subtraction if you're sure that ALL of your college-educated survey completers filled out the survey in the same way. Which is why this jury question is stupid and badly phrased.

But again, in every situation ever that I have dealt with this question, including in numerous government surveys, it is meant to be a forced choice that gets only one answer per respondent.


Posted by: Witt | Link to this comment | 05-20-11 2:45 PM
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45

I mean, unless you want "trade school" and "after high school" to be mutually exclusive. But that would be really stupid.


Posted by: Sifu Tweety | Link to this comment | 05-20-11 2:45 PM
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46

You can only fix it with subtraction if you're sure that ALL of your college-educated survey completers filled out the survey in the same way.

That's not true.


Posted by: Sifu Tweety | Link to this comment | 05-20-11 2:45 PM
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47

I mean, I can't even figure out how it possibly would be true, honestly.


Posted by: Sifu Tweety | Link to this comment | 05-20-11 2:48 PM
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48

OT: Two young guys, wearing what I think is Hassidic attire, just asked me if I was Jewish. This happened on a crowded bus and they asked no one else but me. When I said no, they said they were doing "Jewish outreach."


Posted by: Moby Hick | Link to this comment | 05-20-11 2:48 PM
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49

48:they said they were doing "Jewish outreach."

In France Japan they would have just groped you without asking.


Posted by: JP Stormcrow | Link to this comment | 05-20-11 2:53 PM
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You can only fix it with subtraction if you're sure that ALL of your college-educated survey completers filled out the survey in the same way.

This doesn't really seem true, but it's beside the point, because to the extent it's true it's equally true if the question is answered the way you suggest. So yes, everyone agrees there's a problem with the ambiguous phrasing of the question, because if identically-educated people respond differently that's a problem. But that doesn't lend any support at all to the idea that these "must be" mutually-exclusive choices, which was your claim.


Posted by: urple | Link to this comment | 05-20-11 2:56 PM
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51

46: I'm not sure what you mean. If my survey results have 60% of people marking "Yes" on the HS question, and 20% of people marking "Yes" on the college question, I can confidently say that at least 20% of them have bachelor's degrees.

But I have no way to know how many of those 20% are included in the 60% -- that is, how many of the college-completers marked themselves as having completed high school -- unless my question was worded more clearly than in the OP.


Posted by: Witt | Link to this comment | 05-20-11 2:56 PM
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To be honest, I'm not much of a religious attire expert. They had black, brimmed hats and wore black jackets. But one had pin stripes on his jacket.


Posted by: Moby Hick | Link to this comment | 05-20-11 2:56 PM
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53

But I have no way to know how

Well, you should be able to pull out the answer to "How many respondents said Yes to both HS and College?" If you're working backward from already compiled statistics that have been done wrong, and you don't have the original data, you've got a problem, but not if you do.


Posted by: LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 05-20-11 2:59 PM
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54

51: wait, so is the problem that you want to know how many people attended college or trade/technical school, but neither finished high school nor got a GED?

Because, if so, having a three-way forced choice is not going to answer that question either.


Posted by: Sifu Tweety | Link to this comment | 05-20-11 3:00 PM
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55

But one had pin stripes on his jacket.

Moby was groped by Hideki Matsui? (pretend it's 2009).


Posted by: JP Stormcrow | Link to this comment | 05-20-11 3:01 PM
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56

Move to Brooklyn Moby, then you could get the 'are you Jewish' thing a half dozen times in the space of a half mile at certain times of the year. The nice thing about Jewish proselytizers as opposed to the Christian ones is that saying 'no, not Jewish' gets rid of them.


Posted by: teraz kurwa my | Link to this comment | 05-20-11 3:02 PM
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57

I can't believe Moby blew the opportunity to answer, "Where it counts."


Posted by: Stanley | Link to this comment | 05-20-11 3:05 PM
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58

Mitzvah Tank!


Posted by: AWB | Link to this comment | 05-20-11 3:09 PM
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59

56: I guess I'm wondering why they only asked me.


Posted by: Moby Hick | Link to this comment | 05-20-11 3:11 PM
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59: were you wearing that one speedo?

No, just kidding. It's your nose.

No no, just kidding. Do you look neurotic?

Okay, okay, sorry. It was your mother.


Posted by: Sifu Tweety | Link to this comment | 05-20-11 3:15 PM
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These are mutually-exclusive choices, otherwise the data is garbage.

If they're mutually exclusive then the form is garbage. If you're only supposed to provide one answer, they should only have asked one question.

The medium is the message.


Posted by: neil | Link to this comment | 05-20-11 3:29 PM
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Misread 58 as 'mikvah tank' and was put in mind of a sin absolving dunking booth


Posted by: annelid gustator | Link to this comment | 05-20-11 3:35 PM
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63

I can't click through from my current location, but is there an edible version? Something like Pop Rocks or rock candy? Seems like a no-brainer.


Posted by: Stanley | Link to this comment | 05-20-11 3:36 PM
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64

Oops. Wrong thread.


Posted by: Stanley | Link to this comment | 05-20-11 3:36 PM
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65

Stanley, for 100 bucks I'll make a design on your bicep with wet candy buttons.


Posted by: AWB | Link to this comment | 05-20-11 3:38 PM
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66

If she uses permanent adhesive, I'll put in $10.


Posted by: Moby Hick | Link to this comment | 05-20-11 5:32 PM
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53: Witt is right if you assume the people analyzing the raw data are either mathematical illiterates, or don't care about extracting meaningful information, just about doing some kind of perfunctory reporting.

While it's true that a curious person with a laptop could easily interpret a set of answers to non-mutually-exclusive questions, that doesn't mean it actually happens. People do lots of silly things with non-mutually-exclusive data, such as adding together the yesses in the different questions to get a number for "yes to at least one".

It's not so much that the question is poorly constructed. It's that the analysts are poorly constructed, and it's really hard to construct an idiot-proof dataset.


Posted by: Benquo | Link to this comment | 05-22-11 8:13 AM
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I feel these responses are missing a verb, interrogating if I am enrolled, or have attempted, matriculated, or something with a degree of completion.

My education tells me that 'Above high school' is 'above grade school' so I would have answered yes to that, even when I was in kindergarten (unless influenced by a grade 13 wag from Ontario).


Posted by: Econolicious | Link to this comment | 05-22-11 9:01 AM
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When asked for 'zip code' I have come to realize they mean 'your billing zip code'. I learned this by trial and error,
after responding with my favourite zip code, a famous zip code, a guess as to the retailer's zip code, my
residential zip code, an aspirational zip code, and random example zip code ...


Posted by: Econolicious 90210 | Link to this comment | 05-22-11 9:05 AM
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