1.6.2: Illustration- Cows in Děčín

The voters of Děčín are being sent to the polls to vote on a city referendum that proposes to limit the number of cows that can be kept inside the city limits. The wording on this referendum is quite similar to ones proposed over the past several years.

Given the information from previous votes, the Director of the Independent Electoral Commission (NVK) estimates that the probability the referendum has of passing is 40%, with an estimated 48% of the voters supporting it.

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Note that this research question deals with the probability of winning, not just the best estimate of the vote in favor. This requires estimating the entire probability distribution of the dependent variable.

While there are some rather sophisticated methods, we will be able to answer a similar question using Monte Carlo simulation. Such simulation consists of drawing large samples from each of the parameter-estimate distributions, calculating a predicted outcome for each of those sets of estimates, and examining the distribution of these predictions.

Monte Carlo methods are a powerful set of techniques that allows you to estimate results when the assumptions of the mathematical model are not fully met by the data.

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