However, with the spiralling number of surveys appearing in the media with each passing year, having a certain amount of knowledge about statistics has come to my aid on numerous occasions. Because it turns out that even intelligent people don’t really understand statistics at all.

Here, I’d simply like to address the number one, burning misunderstanding people have about statistics: the sample size has to be similar in number to the total population in a study.

No. Honestly, no. I realise it’s not wholly obvious, but no.

Take the recent example of the survey of Microsoft employees via Glassdoor.com, which showed that around half of them were unhappy with Steve Ballmer’s performance.

Because the sample size – that is, the number of people surveyed – was around 1,000, and the overall number of Microsoft employees is around 80,000, one leading Microsoft blogger sent a tweet saying: “Those surveyed for that report equates to about 0.625% of Microsoft employees… again, hardly representative at all. Seems very flawed.”

The 0.625% stems from the 500 Microsoft employees who weren’t happy with Ballmer.

But it’s not flawed at all. To explain why, I’ll analyse that survey backwards.

We’ll assume that Microsoft has precisely 80,000 employees, and that precisely 50% of them don’t believe Ballmer is doing a good job.

If we repeatedly surveyed 383 people (randomly chosen each time), then statistics show that 19 times out of 20 the results – that is, 95% of the time – we’d get a result showing between 45% and 55% of them didn’t believe Ballmer was doing a good job.

To switch that into statistical speak, that’s a 95% confidence level with a 5% margin of error (that is, 50% plus or minus 5%).

I know what you’re thinking: 95% confidence level isn’t enough. So let’s go for 99%. Assuming the same conditions – 80,000 employees, 50% unhappy – then we’d need a sample size of 659 people.

To put that into plain English, with a sample size of 659 precisely 99 out of 100 surveys would show a result of between 45% and 55% being unhappy with Ballmer’s performance.

9,985 out of 10,000 surveys would show 45% to 55% of Microsoft employees were Ballmer-unhappy

What happens if we up the sample size to 1,000? The confidence level increases to 99.85%, so 9,985 out of 10,000 surveys would show 45% to 55% of Microsoft employees were anti-Ballmer.

In fact, the Glassdoor.com ratings are based on a 1,119 sample size, giving a confidence level of 99.92%. Pretty strong.

One final point: the biggest problem with any survey is finding a truly random sample. Glassdoor.com doesn’t appear to vet its survey respondents (other than for insults, trade secrets or defamation), so you or I could contribute our own reviews should we so wish.

You could also argue that, as a recruitment-orientated website, it will be biased towards current Microsoft employees looking to leave, or ex-employees with a grudge.

But neither of those potential flaws would explain why Oracle’s CEO gets such a high approval rating when his company rating is actually lower than Microsoft’s. As such, we can all have confidence in Glassdoor.com’s sample-gathering techniques, while Steve Ballmer should think about how he can change his employees’ minds.

In May, we reported how Steve Ballmer narrowly avoided becoming a human omelette after being pelted with eggs during a speech in Hungary. 

Today, outgoing President George W Bush was attacked by a shoe-hurling journalist, who displayed as much accuracy with his size nines as Tony Blair did with the dodgy dossier.

Both Ballmer and Bush escaped their relative attacks unscathed. So the big question is: who’s the best ducker?

Ballmer was initially a braveheart, standing proud and facing down a verbal assault from his assailant. When the eggs showed up, however, he was skipping round the stage like a Strictly Come Dancing contestant after a dodgy curry. His dive for cover behind the speaking lectern deserved a 9.5, but his hardman reputation went with it.

Bush, on the other hand, was – for possibly the first time in his life – simply magnificent. With barely a moment to think (and who knows how futile such a moment would have been anyway), W managed to duck two pieces of point-blank footwear that were thrown at the kind of velocity normally reserved for 20-mile tunnels on the Franco Swiss border.  If he’d shown this kind of calm and courage under fire in 2001, the world would be a very different place indeed. 

George W Bush: what a ducker. 

Don’t get too excited though, Ballmer bashers, because there is a bit of a wind-down period to allow him to get his affairs in order. Nine or ten years to be precise, or at least until his “last kid goes to college” apparently.

Seriously though, it does seem a shame it will take so long when you consider how badly Vista has been received generally speaking, and no matter how you try and paint it pretty that is the truth of the matter, not to mention the whole not buying Yahoo fiasco.

But if not Ballmer, then who? Bill Gates has, of course, already been there, done that and got the ‘I’m out of here’ t-shirt. Indeed, he gave what is widely expected to be his last major Microsoft speech this week before concentrating on whatever multi-billionaires with time on their hands do.

Joanne Bradford, former MSN Media Network chief media officer and also a former Microsoft VP of sales and marketing is out of the running. The clue is in the ‘former’ preface, as she has jumped ship and joined a startup instead. I guess nobody would have seriously thought that Rob Short, the former VP for Windows Core Technology or, to put it another way, the man responsible for Vista, was ever going to be a serious contender. Not least because he suffers from the same former-itis as Bradford having quit earlier in the year. I can’t imagine why. Jeff Raikes, another long-time Microsoftee, currently the president of the Microsoft Business Division is not yet a former but will be by the end of the year as he has announced he is retiring in September. Which pretty much only leaves Ray Ozzie, Chief Software Architect and another man to have well and truly served his time at Microsoft.

It’s him or Hillary Clinton…

Here’s five reasons why it wouldn’t be a bad idea to give the robot Ballmer’s job permanently:

1. It wouldn’t sweat like a pig with a faulty thermostat when bounding round the stage yelling “developers, developers, developers.”
2. Robots run on logic – there’s no chance of it spunking away $47 billion on Yahoo.
3. It might catch on. Imagine Johnny Five running Google, and R2-D2 taking over at Apple. Press conferences would be awesome.
4. Robots get things done on time. Windows 7 would definitely arrive as promised in 2009.
5. Outbound attacks on the likes of Linux, Apple and Sun would be blocked by Ballmer-Bot’s built-in Windows Security Center. Then again, perhaps not…

“So, XP – is it really going this time?”

“Yes, definitely,” our Vista man replied. “We’ve extended the deadline once, we can’t keep XP alive for ever.”

Less than 48 hours later, and a journalist in Belgium pops the same question to someone slightly higher up the Microsoft hierachy – Steve Ballmer – who replies:

“If customer feedback varies we can always wake up smarter…”

Someone set the alarm clock.