Public Statement #11. Erik J. Heels read the following prepared statement at the 2025-10-28 Acton Finance Committee (FinCom) meeting. Emphasis added.
OPENING STATEMENT
Hello, Erik, E-R-I-K, Heels, H-E-E-L-S, 17 Forest Road.
I am an Associate Member of the Transportation Advisory Committee (TAC), but I am speaking today only for myself.
After the Town Election on 2025-04-29, where voters expressed one set of opinions, I was concerned that the surveys done at the 2025-05-05 Town Meeting and the Select Board summer “listening session” surveys were statistically invalid.
My statistics professor at MIT was adept at explaining survey methodology, so I’m paraphrasing a couple of examples that he gave in class. Quoting from an article that I wrote for the American Bar Association in 1997 entitled “The Truth About Stats And Dogs (Or Why Most Surveys Are Wrong)” (https://www.giantpeople.com/49.html).
“Rule number one. Surveys must be based on samples that are random. If a survey is based on a random sample, then its results can be generalized to the population from which the sample was drawn. If it is not, they cannot.
Consider the following example. On the weekend during which a movie theater is running a science fiction marathon, the movie theater’s management decides to survey its audience members about what kinds of movies the theater should show in the future. Lo and behold, the survey reveals that 95% of the audience members want to see more science fiction movies. So the theater holds another science fiction marathon the following weekend and conducts another survey, but this time 97% want more science fiction. After a few move weekends and a few more surveys, the theater is showing 100% science fiction, but (oddly enough) the audience size has been steadily decreasing. Eventually, the theater goes out of business. Why? Because each survey was less accurate than the previous one, each sample less random. And it turns out that there are only a few science fiction fanatics who want to attend science fiction marathons each and every weekend.
The above example may seem obvious. But others are not so obvious. Consider the city transportation authority that surveys its subway riders to determine how frequently people use the subway. The not so obvious problem with this survey is that if half of the city’s population uses the subway about once per week, and if the other half uses the subway five times per week, any survey of subway riders will always contain more of the second group of riders than of the first group. In order to have a random sample, the city must survey people at a location other than the subway.”
START SLIDESHOW
2025-09-25-Acton-Spending-Survey-Results.pdf
How many of you saw my Acton Spending Survey that I conducted from late August to late September?
I conducted the survey to see how closely the Select Board’s 13 goals (from their listening sessions) line up with Actonian’s goals for Acton. The short story is that 6 of the goals have clear public support, and 7 do not have clear public support, within the statistical margin of error.
CONTINUE SLIDESHOW
END SLIDESHOW & CLOSING STATEMENT
There is, unfortunately, an art to creating an INACCURATE survey. But there is art AND A SCIENCE to creating an ACCURATE survey. And the good thing about science is that it’s true whether or not you believe it. Thank you for listening.
Erik Heels, 17 Forest Road, HEELS H-E-E-L-S at ALUM A-L-U-M dot MIT dot EDU (HEELS@ALUM.MIT.EDU), Actonian since 1995.
END
About Erik J. Heels
Erik J. Heels is an entrepreneur, veteran, and the founder of Clocktower Law LLC (Clocktower Law) (https://www.clocktowerlaw.com/), a patent and trademark law firm in Great Boston (not a typo) that caters to startups. He earned his BS in electrical engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and his JD from the University of Maine School of Law (Maine Law). Except for a one-year failed stint from 2024-2025, Erik has never belonged to any political party. As it says in the ‘political views’ section of his Facebook profile: ‘Independent. I vote for the smartest candidate. It doesn’t always work out.’
