If you wanted to know who would win an election, then the only reliable (most of the time) way to do that is to ask everyone to vote for real and count them all. Short of doing that, if you want to get an idea who would win you can pick a group that you hope is representative of the whole of the voting population, ask them what they plan to vote instead, and then multiply up to the full group. But it turns out, whenever you ask people things, it's jolly hard to really have confidence in what you're extrapolating up to as all sorts of bias can creep into your sample.

If you ask people what they plan to vote they may lie, they may tell you what they plan to do then change their mind, they may tell you what they think you want to hear depending on who's asking, they may say the first option because it's easiest, and you may ask in the places where it's easy or cheap to do so, or hear from only the people who are happy and not too busy to talk with you.

In the example in the sketch, if you hope to receive responses to your questions by surveys then you get responses from people who happen to not mind doing surveys — from anyone who throws them in the bin you won't receive a single data point.

All of these, and others, can lead to a bias in your sample and, at times, to drawing wholly inaccurate conclusions.

Extreme example from How to Lie with Statistics by Darrell Huff.

Sampling bias

"Whatever your current T-shirt budget is, double it," said Tom Kelley in his book The Art of Innovation. He was talking about what makes 'hot teams' through his experience leading the global design company IDEO.

I'm still amazed by the power of wearing the same thing to instantly unite a group. From the dressing up of bachelor and bachelorette parties, to putting on a shirt for a sports team, a demonstration, a company event, or just a night out, wearing the same thing feels good and brings people together like little else can.

T-shirts make a team

Sentences that have been written in a passive voice are generally less powerful than sentences that have been written in an active voice.

Active writing hits harder than passive writing.

It's easy for passive writing to slip in. Here's a handy technique to help spot passive writing in your sentences. Try adding "...by monkeys" to the end of the sentence. If it still makes sense then there's a good chance it's passive.

In the example in the sketch: "The bug will be fixed" you can tack on "...by monkeys" and all makes sense. It's passive. Passive writing is an easy way to distance ourselves, and our opinions from what we're writing. Active writing takes ownership, responsibility and connects with the reader. "We'll fix the bug. Sorry about that."

I love the "...by monkeys" example for spotting passive writing as it vividly shows how responsibility disappears.

This super example and technique is from Monzo's excellent tone of voice guidelines. Handy for writing copy on the web, for your brand, and for every day life.

You might like the excellent Hemingway app to spot other non-Hemingway slips in your writing. I ran this post through it and cut out a lot of fluff.

I also love the classic The Elements of Style by Strunk and White.

By monkeys