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Gather a random sampling of 10,000 young, Internet savvy folks, and ask them if they enjoy statistics, and I bet you only one of them will say yes. I feel confident I’d win such a bet because I just did a quick survey of Facebook users age 18-28 and asked them just that. The best part is, this survey took only about 30 seconds to conduct, and didn’t cost me a dime.

Statistics are wonderful, interesting, useful things (and with this sentence, I think I’ve shown which of the 10,000 folks I am). I was paging through my feeds this evening, glancing over the political headlines, and a posting from from conservative political blogger Patrick Ruffini caught my eye. It was entitled Radiohead Republicans - what looked like a new political catchphrase I hadn’t yet heard of, so I clicked and investigated.

It appears that Ruffini has been experimenting with the new Facebook Flyer’s advertisement module, which yields interesting demographic information:

There just aren't that many [Radiohead Republicans].

But there are plenty more interested in the Bible, Country music, Sportscenter, watching 24, and playing Halo 3 on their Xbox.

Meanwhile, liberals watch the Daily Show, love Radiohead (by a 6-to-1 margin over conservatives), and let's just say I like who Stephen Colbert takes votes from.

Ruffini goes on to describe the political demographic research he’s engaging in - it’s a simple procedure. Just head over to the Facebook Flyers page, take note of the total recorded Facebook userbase for your starting point, and then start entering keywords under the “Who should see this Flyer?” heading. As you narrow your focus in criteria, the number will dwindle.

Results are obviously not scientific, but clearly, this could still be a boon to political strategists. With the exception of when Ron Paul is included in any survey, most all online political surveys tend to mirror the offline polls fairly well. In terms of other applications, the business and marketing ideas abound: find pockets of interest in various localities worldwide for a product or service, compare statistics of different types of technology’s popularity to determine what feature should be next on the development list, or what sort of other interests folks have who list online video as an interest (free tip: for inspiration on what you can statistically analyze, see Ken Rutkowski’s regular IQ reports).

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