A BRIEF HISTORY OF SAMPLING
    President Alf Landon
    President Thomas E. Dewey
    Two Types of Sampling Methods

    This section offers a little of the folklore of survey sampling.  You learn about the Literary Digest's apparent success in predicting presidential elections--until 1936 when they tanked.  George Gallup, using a different technique was successful in 1936 and he stayed successful until 1948, when he picked Thomas E. Dewey to beat Harry Truman.

    In 1948, a group of academic researchers successfully predicted the election outcome, using still another techniques, which is used to this date.  Now we have such a powerful method that nothing can go wrong. . .can go wrong. . .can go wrong. . .

    This chapter will discuss both probability sampling and nonprobability sampling, beginning with the latter.