META: Multiple-choice polls don't work right.

[Hardhead]

I noticed today that the polls in which you can click on multiple choices aren't working right.

Say you create a poll called "What did you have for breakfast?" and the choices are:

* Eggs
* Ham
* Eberron

Now, let's say that 50% of the people had eggs for breakfast, and 50% had both eggs and ham for breakfast, and those people vote accordingly.

In theroy, the poll should show:

Eggs: 100%
Ham: 50%
Eberron: 0%.

But, that's not what's happening. Instead, if you vote for multiple things, your vote is "split up" between the different choices. Someone that voted for both Eggs and Ham, has only half of their vote is applied to each. Instead the total will be:

Eggs: 75%
Ham: 25%
Eberron: 0%.

That still shows you that more people had eggs than ham, but the percentages are way off. 75% of the people did not have eggs. 100% did.

If you don't quite understand what I mean, do this: create a poll and give it three choices. Vote for all three, and look at the result while one person only has voted. The outcome with one person voting for all three will be:

Choice 1: 33%
Choice 2: 33%
Choice 3: 33%

In other words, it's a useless poll, percentage-wise.

 

[Piratecat]

Hey, please post Meta threads in the Meta forum. That way they'll get seen.

Anyways, i don't think this is anything we can control.

 

[der_kluge]

I've noticed this myself. All it's attempting to do is ensure that the total percentage equals 100%. Worthless, yes.

What I've done, if I'm posting the poll is to highlight the results, paste them into Excel, and divide each response by the total number of responses to get a more reasonable breakdown.

That seems to be the only way to do it.