Quote from: dropoutbox on January 26, 2012, 02:56:40 AM

Quote from: bitcoinbitcoin113 on January 26, 2012, 02:09:35 AM

Ok, fixed.

The purpose is to get an idea of the distribution of investors. Taking that and the total number of investors allows us to estimate how much money is in the hands of traders with different account sizes.

For example, if 500 people are willing to invest $1,000 they would have equal power to one person with $500,000 if they acted in a coordinated fashion.

With a likely biased sample size of 47? I don't think you will get any meaningful data to manipulate the manipulator with this.

That's why its so funny when stories get into the news like: "Caffeine reduces the risk of heart attacks", due to some experiment done on 30 rats. Even most clinical trials and gallup polls only include a couple thousand people. I think there is some value to it though, as long as you realize what you are actually doing is building up multiple lines of noisy but cheaply attained evidence. Then using this to determine the priors you use when trying to answer the big question:

Does sentiment currently affect bitcoin market value at all? If so, how much?

As of right now, I am leaning towards very little. This poll is kind of changing my mind though due to so many people saying they have over 1 grand involved. How many people are speculating on bitcoins?

The data is out there:
Where did GeniuSxBoy get the number of people currently connected to Mt. Gox live?
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=31614.0

I think the max number of people connected to the various live charting sites during the recent craziness would be a pretty good indicator. I am not sure whether this data is available or not though.