Let us now argue passionately about data collection

The government has announced, on the grounds of "personal privacy," a rather important change to the census. Stephen Gordon, in response, is scathing.

It’s not often that sample selection bias becomes an issue of national importance, but then again, it’s not often that census sampling design is outsourced to drunken monkeys. The people who thought that increasing the number of long forms to be sent out will somehow compensate for making the long-form responses voluntary simply do not understand the gravity of the error they are making.