A magazine company conducted a phone survey asking subscribers to identify the brand of outdoor camping equipment they like best. Every subscriber was surveyed, and the results were printed in an article titled “Most Popular Equipment among All Campers.” Why is the title of the article misleading?

For view, of course.

Edit: ok, now I confused. Are you asking what makes the title misleading, or why the magazine makes the misleading title?

This sounds like a homework question. Is it a homework question?
I’m in a good mood:
The answer is It’s misleading because it says “All campers” when they only surveyed a few

^Good catch @SergeantQueen!!

@Mimishu1995 I believe he was asking how the title was misleading, not why the magazine made it misleading. If the magazine titled it something like “Most popular equipment among (magazine) subscribers” that would have been better. But they Generalized it and made it seem like every camper out there thought this list of best equipment was accurate. And that’s just a marketing thing if you want to get into the why. Make people think they are more credible because “Oh, wow, every camper likes this? I should like it too!!!”

Oh ok. I thought it was so obvious that the title was misleading so they wanted more… Thanks.

Not all subscribers are campers.

Welcome to Fluther.

It’s clearly a homework problem, and for that reason it shouldn’t have been answered, so @SergeantQueen was very naughty, not because “it’s awful to answer homework questions”, but it’s unfair to you to be deprived of the thought process that you could have used to find three obvious reasons why the article title is misleading, vis-à-vis the stated information about the survey – and what you should be able to figure out about surveys just from living in a country that relies upon them so much.

1. Think of what the survey question is about. That is, what is it about specifically. Then see what the article title is about – specifically.

2. Think of who was surveyed, and compare that to the title of the article.

3. The final flaw is in the nature of surveys in general, how they are conducted and who gets to see the questions in the first place.

This sounds like a good class to learn some critical thinking skills. I hope you enjoy it and commit to it.

Why do people think homework questions are not allowed? The guidelines very clearly say that they are (but that it’s rude to just post the question verbatim).

In any case, the article title is misleading for at least two reasons: (1) it generalizes from the magazine’s subscribers—who are likely to compose an unrepresentative sample group—to all campers, and (2) it promises a ranking of equipment, whereas the question asked the respondents to rank brands.

Note that (2) is probably not what the question is meant to capture. Nevertheless, it is a misleading element of the article title.

It doesn’t specify what kind of equipment, and “campers” is somewhat slang for anybody.