Retired Nevada County Supervisor, Jim Weir, blasted Rise Gold’s recently published, privately-funded survey in an opinion piece in the Union and concluded that “This survey smacks of the inmates writing the business plan for the asylum.”
Here's how Mr. Weir came to that conclusion:
"My Probability and Statistics class in college was taught by a cantankerous old geezer. One day we got off onto a tangent about surveys. His advice: 'If you want a survey to come out a particular way, just pick your data from folks that don’t have a dog in the fight.'
Certainly Rise Gold must have had a teacher like that in the way they picked their folks to come out with a 'strong support' for the Idaho-Maryland Mine project.
Consider this: They picked 100 folks in each of the county’s five supervisorial districts to formulate their data. Think about it.
District 1 is mostly Nevada City, Banner Mountain, and the area around. They will have little, if any, impact on their homes or businesses. Not much of a dog in the fight, is there?
District 2 ..." continue reading in The Union.
Jim Weir is a retired Nevada County supervisor for District 3. He is vice president of engineering for RST Engineering in Grass Valley.