And if the story ended here, this conclusion might be the one the readers take home: according to the students of HVRHS, the towns from best to worst are North Canaan, Salisbury, Falls Village, Kent, Sharon and Cornwall. However, this conclusion doesn’t account for a bias in the data.
Making up over half of responses, students from North Canaan and Salisbury represent 35, or about 30%, and 27, or about 24%, of the votes respectively. Sharon, Falls Village and Kent each make up between 14 and 15 votes respectively, or about 12.5% of the votes each. Only 11 students from Cornwall responded, leaving them to make up the last 9% of responses to the survey.
This chart breaks down the home towns of the students that responded to the survey. North Canaan represented more than a quarter of the responses, with Salisbury trailing closely.Graphic by Peter Austin
To see if responders really do exhibit loyalty to their town of origin, we can see what percent of responders ranked their town as their top choice. The data reveals there is often clear loyalty to one’s own town, particularly in Kent and Salisbury where over 90% of responders ranked their town first.
Once this factor is taken into account, it becomes clear how North Canaan and Salisbury managed such a hefty lead, while Cornwall and Sharon fell far to the bottom of most students’ rankings.
One way to see the full picture would be to break down what town each of the votes came from.
Attempting to figure out which town is the best comes down to the fight between Salisbury and North Canaan. While they received almost the same number of votes, Salisbury received many more votes from people outside of Salisbury than North Canaan did. Salisbury also received more second place and the same number of third place votes, while receiving fewer fourth, fifth and sixth place votes than North Canaan.
But drawing any definitive conclusions is more complicated than it may seem at first glance. This leads to a more important idea, that data isn’t always as simple as it seems.
