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| Don Udel (ETC) wrote:
> "John Navas" < spamfilter1@navasgro
up.com> wrote in message > On the
> contrary -- Consumer Reports suffers from a self-selected sample
>
> And once again CR is right.
Coffee is pretty subjective though, more than even some other food items
such as ice cream, where the poorer ice creams pump a lot of air in, and
use artificial flavors and thickeners, and may use corn syrup rather
than sugar.
That said, according to one article I read, McDonalds started using 100%
Arabica beans about a year ago. If that's the case, they may really be
better than Starbucks for regular coffee, since McDonald's sells a lot
of regular coffee and makes it fresh every few minutes, while at
Starbucks it can often sit around for an hour while customers buy
lattes, and frappacinos (sp?). There's nothing special about the beans
that Starbucks uses versus the coffee that McDonald's uses.
Where CR is most useful is in their surveys of various sorts, such as
vehicle reliability, and wireless coverage. They aren't asking people
what they like best, they're asking people for their own experiences, so
any bias is eliminated. They also use extremely large sample sizes which
gives their surveys a very small margin of error.
Some people complain that Consumer Reports subscribers aren't
representative of the population at large, but in reality this cancels
out when they do their surveys. I don't think that anyone claims that
with such a huge sample size that the results would be much different if
they surveyed non-subscribers, though as I pointed out, there might be a
small difference based on the socio-economic differences between CR
subscribers and the general population. For many of the metro areas in
the last survey, including the San Francisco Bay Area, the differences
between the carriers were quite large. In some areas they were not very
large.
Oh, and In 'N Out has good iced tea!
[Copied to alt.cellular.attws. Please post all alt.cellular.cingular
posts to alt.cellular.attws as well. The Cingular name is going away,
and alt.cellular.attws is the proper venue for posts regarding AT&T's
Wireless Service.]
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