Statistical concepts have literally thousands of applications. These
             include both the hard' sciences and social sciences but also fields such
             as political science. Statistics are so key to the nature of certain
             fields that most of them could not exist without concepts such as the
             The mean, median and mode are often used in political campaigns.
             These campaigns are designed to appeal to targeted demographics, which form
             the basis for blocks of voters. Presidential speeches are designed to
             specifically appeal to a hypothesized median' voter. Swing votes often
             represent a mode or block' of voters who can be expected to vote in a
             similar fashion. Where the political support of one's party members can be
             predicted with safety, the fate of elections always swings with popular
             opinion. If the opinion of the hypothetical median' citizen were not
             courted to, one of the two parties would eventually become marginalized. A
             concept like the Axis of Evil' or Lock Box' seems adolescent to
             university professors and political analysts, but speechwriters didn't have
             these people in mind when they created the concept; by definition, the mean
             IQ is 100. Political pundits see their voters in groups like Soccer
             Moms;' concerned mothers who vote in the interest of their families. On
             any given opinion, these groups constitute modes reflecting a certain
             Political campaigns use extensive population sampling in order to
             gather data. These often revolve around the outcome of polls conducted by
             the Gallup company. After a speech is made, questions will be designed to
             neutrally assess the opinion of those who listened to the speech. Gallup
             approaches a group with a large enough sample size to diminish the margin
             of error. They'll ask questions such as "what do you think of candidate
             Shwartzenegger's comments regarding the terminally ill" so as to assess
             ...