Andy's Wordshop

A poll, /poul/. This is the name for the activity which involves asking a lot of people for their attitudes or reactions to a particular issue, problem or situation, then publishing the results and drawing some kind of statistical conclusion from the analysis of the data. The minimum number of respondents for the results of a poll to be statistically significant has been determined as about 1030 people.

The word "poll" originally meant the same as "ball", then because of the round shape it came to mean a human head. Then the idea of counting heads at public meetings developed, to get the number of votes for or against a proposal, and now a poll is a form of research to find out about people's opinions, ideas or plans regarding current topics.