We have lots of catching up to do, WitCHes to burn and whatnot. However, we’ll first try to get in a few quick topical posts (give or take a couple weeks …). This first one is half-post, half-WitCH. We had planned it as a post, but it then seemed worth letting readers have a first whack at it; as always, readers are welcome and encouraged to comment below.
Serena Williams was back at Wimbledon this year, for the ninety-fifth time, almost grabbing her eighth title. This phenomenal athlete was also the subject of some media fluff, of the type that always accompanies these events. It was reported, pretty much everywhere, that
“One in eight men think that they could score a point off Serena Williams”.
Oh, those silly, silly men.
Twitter, of course, lit up over these “delusional” men and the media gleefully reported the ridicule, and more often than not piled on. A rare few articles gave tepid consideration to the idea that the men weren’t delusional, and none more than that.
The Serena fluff came courtesy of British polling firm YouGov, popular with those comforted by the illusion that someone cares what they think. Specifically, YouGov asked:
“Do you think if you were playing your very best tennis, you could win a point off Serena Williams?”
YouGov announced the result of the poll on Twitter, with catchy headline and accompanying graph:
“One in eight men (12%) say they could win a point in a game of tennis against 23 time grand slam winner Serena Williams”
Note that 3% of women also answered that they could win a point; we could see nothing in the media reports questioning, much less ridiculing, this percentage. (The missing percentages correspond to people who answered “don’t know”.)
On the YouGov website, the poll is also broken down by age and so on, but there is little information on the nature of the polling. All we are told is:
“1732 [Great Britain] adults were questioned on 13 Jul 2019. Results are weighted to be representative of the GB population.”
OK, so now the WitCH aspect. What is wrong with the poll? What is wrong with the reaction to it and the reporting of it? As always, feel free to respond in the comments. (You might try to keep your answers brief, but it won’t be easy.)
Finally, to state explicitly what should be obvious, we are not in any way having a go at Serena Williams. She is a great athlete, and throughout her career she’s had to put up with all manner of sexist and racist garbage. We just don’t believe the YouGov poll is such an example, or at least so clearly so.