Leading Questions - Yes Prime Minister
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- Опубліковано 14 січ 2012
- Sir Humphrey Appleby demonstrates the use of leading questions to skew an opinion survey to support or oppose National Service (Military Conscription).
Taken from the 1st Season of Yes Prime Minister - Episode 2, The Ministerial Broadcast.
Yes Prime Minister is a British political satire/ comedy that was aired in the 1980s. The original copyright belongs to BBC.
Usage of this clip constitutes fair use for the purpose of education.
'Politicians use statistics in the same way that a drunk uses lamp-posts-for support rather than illumination.' -- Andrew Lang
parrais I
Yes but that is the only use that statistics has. Statistics was invented by eugenecists to prove that white people were superior. Its complete garbage that has persisted merely because its useful to people who want to lie. Of course politicians love it.
@@Arigator2, what a load of bollocks. Statistics was in use in the 17th century, long before white supremacists tried to hijack it.
@@musiclover9361 Scott Humphreys
You mean the opposite. Stephen Jay Gould fabricated (EDIT: an """analysis""" of) skull measurements in order to disprove the "racist" Morton's skull measurements, which were recently verified to be accurate, and Gould lied. And recently James Watson has been rebuked because he believes IQ differences between geographic populations has mostly to do with genetics. This is despite the fact that IQ has been shown to have upwards of 70% heritability, so what he said as at worst a natural inference.
We're supposed to believe that despite the findings on IQ being highly genetic, all biological differences between populations end at face structure, skull structure, and other bodily differences. Who really has done the "hijacking" of statistics?
@@MichiruPoster: "Stephen Jay Gould fabricated skull measurements in order to disprove the "racist" Morton's skull measurements, which were recently verified to be accurate, and Gould lied."
No he didn't, no they weren't and no he didn't.
I love Bernard's face when he realises he's been led into agreeing and disagreeing with National Service.
Matthew Okot
Reputable survey companies will never start any question with "Do you agree..." It automatically introduces a bias.
Guess what the original referendum question the Scottish Parliament want to ask the voters started with.
@@grahvis "But there aren't many of those"
@@grahvis yes, they seem insistent on spewing out the narrative of scottish oppresion, your part of an incredibly wealthy country what more do tou really have to complain about? it's not like we're trying to exterminate them for goodness sake. there are countries who have it way worse off. the scottish parliament need to grow up and stop trying to gain power for themselves
I can't agree more, Sir!
This scene has stuck with me over the past decades more than anything else from the show. The succinct distillation of how so much of our world works.
I was told that this show is the best way to learn how the government sector works I've seen the whole series and it is so relevent still and it's a great laugh
My grandmother worked for a Federal MP 25+ years ago and she said that all the Aust federal politicians watched Yes Minister/Prime Minister devoutly.
Steve Gemmell it's a classic, it's still relevant, and yet we all still haven't learned anything.
guguigugu so true lol
An example of what this video is talking about: twitter.com/DannyJohnJules/status/559625390982184960
"Things don't happen just because prime minsters are very keen of them. Neville Chamberlin was very keen on peace."
iandhr1 I remembered this dialogue while watching The Darkest Hour...
That is actually not so funny for people whose parents/grandparents were affected by Munich agreement.
My parents were in the forces all through WW2, my mother won a medal for her work on an anti aircraft battery, and they would have found your comment ridiculous as they wouldn’t have been at all put out by it.
MyYTwatcher
It IS comedy. And as a Czech i has to say it is hilarious.
@@MyYTwatcher Yes, it is.
As I've said, 'Yes Minister' is one of the best political educations you can get.
It really is, and you're entertained into the bargain as well.
Such brilliant scripts.
One of ? No sir. The very best. Nothing comes in real politik.
Margaret Thatcher used to say pretty much the same - they all used to watch it
Too bad it has all of that canned laughter. That ruins it for me.
I've never trusted a poll since I saw this. It's so blindingly obvious and yet I never realised until I saw this scene.
Only just decided to watch Yes, Minister and Yes, Prime Minister clips, and even I, who was already cynical about the civil service, have had my eyes opened even wider!
Real pollsters actually rig the sample groups, not always the questions.
;) or both..but when you use sampling bias it's hard to trace .
Ah... the "Reputable Ones!" 😁
One of the most brilliant programs ever made ..
so sharp, so hilarious and so TRUE ...
So it only appears once in TV series history...
Flawless and almost certainly true.
Most definitely true.
Not olmost!
demonstrably true*
Timeless! Would have to be the best scripted program of all time.
We were shown this clip at uni, in a number of subjects, including statistics and ethics, on how statistics, facts and people can be manipulated.
I used the premise for a psychology assignment. We developed a list of 8-10 leading and emotive questions to use in two separate surveys. We then surveyed two groups of 50 people, using the same question, but in a different order to elicit the desired response from each group, positive and negative resultant answers. The 2nd part was to ask each person the alternate set of questions, to see if their answers had changed (most peoples answers changed). The final part was to ask how they felt about being tricked/manipulated in a simple survey, directly after the survey, then 24 hours later. Initially, peoples annoyance and frustration was in regards to being deceived and tricked by the person conducting the test. 24 hours later, people generally took on more responsibility for their answers, saying that they after the survey they felt somewhat confused, embarrassed, and angry that they were so easily manipulated.
As someone who made a survey himself for non-nefarious purposes, even just getting the kind of answers you want is quite hard. You'd be surprised how many ways people can interpret even simple questions.
It wont be the last time in their lives that they will be manipulated. We live in a democracy, can you imagine living in a dictatorship, like all the Communist sympathisers want?
Brilliant. Can't get enough watching it. Set the "YES" frame and piggyback the fourth question for a positive answer. Sales people know how to do it too - Not the reputable ones, but there aren't many of those.
As someone who worked In a sales office this spoke to me. From my boss to the newest recruit they all just wanted the client to say yes.
The only problem with Yes Minister is that it's so accurate it causes anger and resentment.
RIP Derek Fowlds. Hilarious, perfect deadpan performance.
Yes Minister and Yes Prim Minister were collectively the greatest, funniest and most clever programs ever produced for television. Every single episode was superlative and at least 95% of it is still relevant today.
Pretty sure it's going to be 94.57% relevant for the next 1,000 years...
@Jan-Ola Ellingsen Exactly, masterfully argued!
"Usage of this clip constitutes fair use for the purpose of education."
I never - ever - do this, but: LOL
I show it to my students every time I teach a lesson on collecting data.
I use it every time someone links me to any survey with "shocking" results
So subtle so clever shows the range of humour that thoughtful use of language can bring.
Transcript:
BERNARD: He's going to say something new and radical in the broadcast.
HUMPHREY: What, that silly Grand Design? Bernard, that was precisely what you had to avoid! How did this come about? I shall need a very good explanation.
BERNARD: Well, he's very keen on it.
HUMPHREY: What's that got to do with it? Things don't happen just because Prime Ministers are very keen on them. Neville Chamberlain was very keen on peace!
BERNARD: He thinks it's a vote-winner.
HUMPHREY: Ah. That's more serious. Sit down. What makes him think that?
BERNARD: Well, the party had an opinion poll done, and it seems all the voters were in favour of bringing back national service.
HUMPHREY: Well, have another opinion poll done showing the voters are AGAINST bringing back national service.
BERNARD: They can't be for it AND against it.
HUMPHREY: Oh, of course they can, Bernard. Have you ever been surveyed?
BERNARD: Yes. Well, not me, actually, my house. Oh, I see what you mean.
HUMPHREY: Bernard, you know what happens. A nice young lady comes up to you. Obviously you want to create a good impression, you don't want to look a fool, do you?
BERNARD: No.
HUMPHREY: No. So she starts asking you some questions. Mr Woolley, are you worried about the number of young people without jobs?
BERNARD: Yes.
HUMPHREY: Are you worried about the rise in crime among teenagers?
BERNARD: Yes.
HUMPHREY: Do you think there's a lack of discipline in our comprehensive schools?
BERNARD: Yes.
HUMPHREY: Do you think young people welcome some authority and leadership in their lives?
BERNARD: Yes.
HUMPHREY: Do you think they respond to a challenge?
BERNARD: Yes.
HUMPHREY: Would you be in favour of reintroducing national service?
BERNARD: ...Oh. Well, I suppose I might be.
HUMPHREY: Yes or no?
BERNARD: Yes.
HUMPHREY: Of course you would, Bernard. After all you've told me, you can't say no to that. So, they don't mention the first five questions and they publish the last one.
BERNARD: Is that really what they do?
HUMPHREY: Not the reputable ones, no, but there aren't many of those. Alternatively, the young lady can get the opposite result.
BERNARD: How?
HUMPHREY: Mr Woolley, are you worried about the danger of war?
BERNARD: Yes.
HUMPHREY: Are you worried about the growth of armaments?
BERNARD: Yes.
HUMPHREY: Do you think there's a danger in giving young people guns and teaching them how to kill?
BERNARD: Yes.
HUMPHREY: Do you think it's wrong to force people to take up arms against their will?
BERNARD: Yes.
HUMPHREY: Would you oppose the reintroduction of national service?
BERNARD: Yes.
HUMPHREY: There you are, you see, Bernard. The perfect balanced sample. So we just commission our own survey for the Ministry of Defence. See to it, Bernard.
You've just save me a lot of typing, thanks.
Great effort but Just watch it🤷♂️🥴
@@FIHRR-bd8uy Not useful for the deaf/those with hearing problems. UA-cam's auto-captioning is....problematic.
@@Bloodlyshiva great effort fair enough 🤷♂️😁
I love the look of awe on Bernard's face as he realises how he was manipulated!!
The entire series should be required viewing for populations in any democracy. A lesson in civics.
This along with the conversation about the nuclear deterrent (or lack thereof) are my favorite moments from this series.
Add to this element "who" the survey even poses their questions and you have earned the power of being able to create statistics at your own will.
Francis Underwood has nothing on Sir Humphrey Appleby
francis urquhart does tho
primitive murderer vs. genius schemer
@@hansgruber788 Hell, Urquhart would had Humphrey axed...literally and figuratively if thy were to have a duel of wits
Underwood has to get his hands bloody to get things done whereas all Humpy needs is his mouth.
Francis Underwood is a raving power-devoured maniac while Sir Humphrey is the most eloquent and elegant operator and a lover of arts and opera! Sir Humphrey all the way!
That Chamberlain joke is the best
I know am biased as am the biggest fan of this show, but could you really find such a show elsewhere? It is just too good
Programs of this calibre are sadly missed today!
23 people oppose the reintroduction of National Service
Well get a poll done showing 23 people support the reintroduction of National Service then.
Can we have a poll showing 75% of people in pacifist organization support conscription?
It is not one of the best shows, It is the best. Can't change my mind.
Many sketches are funny but some are immortal too, and this is one of them.
Proves opinion polls are bunkum to be ignored. One of the best ever sitcoms with some of the best actors. Never tire of watching this.
They're not all to be ignored. This is an example of a "push poll"-designed to get a specific response to the final question. A reputable pollster doesn't just publish the results; they also make the questions available (so you can see if they are leading questions), as well as a demographic breakdown of respondents (so you can see if the sample was biased).
A sitcom proves absolutely nothing about real life. This scene teaches a very valuable lesson, but not the one most of you seem to be taking from it.
This scene teaches what anybody who studies statistics (i.e. one of the most important subjects a person can ever learn, even basically) will learn very early on, i.e. the results of a poll are only as good as the quality of the poll or study itself.
There are plenty of good polls or surveys out there also, its up to you to determine how useful they are. Just because some political polls turn out to be manipulated or because a sitcom says they do, does mean that they all do? No.
It means you don't ever take anything presented to you at face value and you look into the quality of the study and/or poll/survey and question it yourself and look to the experts analysis in some cases to see what they say also (who may also be subjective too!)....
The editorial of one of our major newspapers The Australian has occasionally been known to pose the question of what Sir Humphrey " would have made of this proposal". As long as there is an Anglophone world, this program will have relevance. And aren't some of us indeed fortunate to have English as a first language?,
Les Griffiths
Of course, remember that Bernard Wooley is, politically speaking, "on both sides of center with slight leanings to the left and right."
He's a civil servant, so, yes, obviously
"but above all, i would've been a stark-staring raving schizophrenic" - sir Humphrey Appleby
The most brilliant TV show ever ... It's timeless, still relevant probably will be so another 200 years...
Wish this could go viral right about now... 2020 could use it.
Are you for or against the government-imposed obligation to wear masks on public transport?
@@wkgurr Against. Next question.
@@wkgurr For.
This is why I take no notice of opinion polls :)
This might have been comedy 40 years ago but it strikes me that this is how the inner levers of power still operate
That is why it is darkly funny
still classic today! timeless. you dont get many times when the writing is as good as this.
Incredibly prescient and pertinent to our time today. This wasnt a comedy series it was a documentary. The greatest series of our time.
This is one of the most brilliant and true scenes in the history of television.
Perfectly balanced. As all things should be.
Humphrey's smile is everything 😂
Nobody mimics a cat who ate a canary better than Nigel Hawthorne. One of the greats, sorely missed.
Oh Sir Humphrey, you great great man :)
Pure genius.
IMHO both Yes Minister and Yes Prime Minister should be shown to High School students before they can vote on both sides of the Pond.
For any who are interested there's a show called Penn and Teller: Bullshit, they did a great episode on numbers which goes greater depth on how numbers and especially opinion polls are manipulated.
+Huron .Blackheart You have to be careful with that show, though. Penn and Teller have been known to spin a few facts themselves.
+Lytrigian of course everyone including you and I are human and would spin facts to suit our needs, opinions and preferences because we have that all important ego and belief system to maintain for ourselves
Try "How to lie with Statistics" first published in 1954 if you really want to know the tricks of the trade.
I find it extremely funny these days when ads have "x% of y people agree". Until "recently" they didn't have to say the "of y people" bit. I often wonder, especially when y is "small" (all the y given are small statistically speaking, but I mean less than 100, or even less than 50), how many groups of y people they polled until they got the x% they wanted (x being fairly high).
This is good comedy and like all good comedy it has a tragedy underneath it and that tragedy is truth.
PS. Don't think for one second it is the members of the political ideology you oppose who do this. They all do it left and right or whatever.
its anti-establishment rather than left/right. I don't think it ever actually mentions which party hacker is part of and tends to focus on cynicism vs idealism instead.
Probably the sharpest moment in Yes Minister, as it's witty enough, but perfectly correct.
All those series were brilliant and so close to the truth, but this episode was one of the funniest and most perceptive.
This is why I don't trust polls.
+Brother Malachai It's part of why I don't trust democracy.
FurryAminal So you'd rather have a petty dicatorship instead?
"democracy is the worst form of government except all those other forms". - Winston Churchill
Full quote and reference (context seldom makes for fun quips so they always get left out on the internet): "Many forms of Government have been tried and will be tried in this world of sin and woe. No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed, it has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time." - Winston Churchill, speech in the House of Commons (November 11, 1947)
Democracy is the safest form of government, it avoids despots and tyrants. But it also avoids the great leaders that force their nations to become fantastic.
Genghis Khan, Julius Caesar, Alexander the Great, Napoleon, Darius I of Persia, none of these men dealt with democracies other than to abolish them and they made their respective nations into great world powers.
Seek out the methodology. There's no reason not to trust polls, just not to trust them blindly.
They're usually more subtle than this, but basically, yeah. For instance "public funding" vs. "tax funding."
The power in how you choose your words.
This is beyond genius!
I used to work for a big aid agency and we'd do surveys and look at those done by others. Things like in the clip do actually happen.
There’s a salesman technique about getting a person to say yes five times.
Brillant show .. What a genius ...!!
I regularly receive "polls" like this from political parties that always end with a request for money.
How polls are done today! Brilliant!
This is timeless.
You should read Orwell more carefully. His concept of doublethink refers to a completely different phenomenon.
Well, this still qualifies as prelude to double-think
@@serbanandreimarin5988 he is replying to someone else.
There was no reply section back then.
@@afia_begum_chowdhury Not exactly of too much importance, my point stiil stands
Such brilliant writing.. and acting
And this is exactly how politics on the left or the right can create support for an argument on any given subject.
"Neville Chamberlain was keen on peace!"
I'm gonna watch these series
Brilliant 💡‼️😆
That is one of my favourite segments i would put in my top 10.
So sublime. 🙂
brilliant
Pure poetry
Great!
These aren’t leading questions. It’s called “priming” and it can be intentional but the bigger risk is that it’s unintentional. It’s one of the reason that polls almost always publish their methodology along with their results
Ignoring the priming, which is absolutely a factor here "Would you be in favour of...?" and "Would you oppose...?" are pretty typical leading question archetypes
This is brilliant
Pure brilliance
Interesting how "National Service"needed explaining ("Conscription) in the text below - shows how the gov't introduced this misnomer to make it seem more palitable at the time.
great video!
So much truth in this one TV show.
4 out of 5 dentists recommend Colgate. >>Yea, right.
I would show this to a poli-sci class if I taught one
I did use the surveys bit (many years ago) in a GCSE maths class on questionnaires...the class enjoyed it so much it took 2 or 3 times through for them to actually analyse what was going on with the questions, and consider what was wrong with the two sets of questions as a questionnaire.
Brilliant
Fantastic 😂🤣😂
Thanks to this video I was able to gain an appreciative understanding on the operations of adaptive filters and how they could be implemented to extract an estimated signal from a noisy signal. I also gained a liking to the Dr. Who theme song which when filtered through a LSE filter can produce a beautiful clear conversation between two ministers in a classical sitcom that my lecturer likes.
It should not distress a person that they could hold to contradictory ideas. Rather, its the sign of a welcoming and open mind.
The problem is you can't be for and against conscription at the same time, or for and against Roe v. Wade, yet you get plenty if ordinary people that could be made to say that depending on how you frame the question.
Blew my mind
This was recorded more than 30 years ago, I don't know whether to laugh, cry or be very, very afraid.
Gold! Enough said
Something tells me that the United States is going to see two polls very soon on Afghanistan. One will support the withdrawal, and the other will oppose the withdrawal.
the very first time i caught this on PBS in 1990-91 it literally blew my mind
this program is a veritable primer for ANYONE looking to work in politics.
NOT FOR NOTHING: YOU CANNOT AND WILL NOT FIND IT BROADCAST ANYWHERE NOW
I am a church warden. This is my life everyday!
You could probably find it on DVD somewhere... not sure if they still sell it, but they might!
fmovies is your friend.
on the 18th of feb a particular group of students will see this video because of a stats class in ANU
Humphrey is so amazing
shows how the question asked before can change the answer to further questions
Oh My Goodddd! Oh My GOD!!! I've been had......damn it, so that's the trick.
And we still see it now with the YouGov polls....😡😡😡
They should use this as an instructional video in marketing 101.
In the US, Frank Luntz was the master of polling like this. His protege was Kellyanne (Fitzpatrick) Conway.
A country that has Humphry on its side can never lose.
It appears we no longer have anyone like him today...
Genius!
Godlike.
Reputable polling agencies list all the questions they asked in the order they asked them. They are called "Toplines." Click links on the article relating findings from a poll and you will get them, then you can make up your own mind on whether the poll is fair or not.
"Not the reputable ones, but there are few of those."
@@GodwynDi Most polling agencies are staffed by professionals with high ethical standards. I'm a sociologist myself.
I love it yes Minister of UA-cam me 👍
Classic !!!
Hence he is Sir Humphrey
Have you already stopped drinking brandy in the morning? Answer YES or NO.
Very true. Have you stopped beating your wife?