More Media Coverage of the Starbucks Buycott

From the Christian Science Monitor on how we learned to stop worrying and love Starbucks:

A coalition of secular, religious, and gun-control groups backing the boycott claim to represent 14 million Americans. But the ability of gun control groups to influence the lawmaking process has waned in recent years, with gun-rights legislation outnumbering gun-control laws by a 3-to-1 margin, according to a recent Associated Press analysis.

I heard NGVAC’s leader, Elliot Fineman on CSNBC talking about how they did Monte Carlo analysis to determine their overall impact. For those of you unfamiliar with statistical methods, Monte Carlo if a random sampling technique most often used to achieve results in mathematical systems that are too complex to do by systematic calculation. I’d love to know how this method is applied to Mr. Fineman’s model, but doubt it will be forthcoming, since we probably have enough collective statistical knowledge among the blogger folk to find flaws. If I had to bet, I’d bet that Fineman is completely full of crap, and largely pulled the number of our his posterior.

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12 thoughts on “More Media Coverage of the Starbucks Buycott”

    1. I caught a short segment on my local station in Portland, Oregon KPTV-12 I think. I sounds like all our station did was read the anti’s press release. No mention was made of our buycot and no attempt was made to make it a balanced piece.
      Can’t find anything on the station’s website about it so it’s already forgotton IMO.

  3. “If I had to bet, I’d bet that Fineman is completely full of crap, and largely pulled the number of our his posterior.”

    This..Totally and completely, this. Even the name of the method makes it sound sketchy to me.

  4. Reader Paula Qualls Gurley disagreed. “I didn’t go today, but will go twice tomorrow. Sick of those who try to extort companies who don’t toe their ‘line.’ I don’t own a gun but I don’t need the antigun lobby in my business.”

    #winning…

  5. He claims that 14 million Americans back gun control. I say that 80-90 million Americans own firearms and probably do not agree to it. Their 14 million number does not look so compelling when put into context.

    So, let’s see how the number game plays out in the only important arenas of politics, voting, legislation and so on. Fineman=LOSER

  7. Who wants to bet his ‘random sampling’ was all done inhouse.

    “100% of respondents claim they will boycott Starbucks….”

    1. Of course, his random sampling also ignores the 98% who go one to say “Yeah, this boycott is going to be easy! I don’t go there anyway, Starbucks is awful!”

  8. If the CNBC Host was on the ball, she should have asked him if he has shorted SBUX. Since his model shows a 90% probability.

    1. Based on when they are caught in a lie, anti-gunners barely put their -mouth- where their mouth is, hard to expect them to do it with their actual money.

  9. Fineman said that they were using self-reported data from their supporters on how much they were not spending at Starbucks.

    So… Jadegold didn’t spend $10,000 this past week at Starbucks.

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