Do You Like Surveys? (Yes or No only please)

Reading the paper today - shows how lacksadaisical I'm feeling for a start...

Apparently the results of a survey done by a travel-related website "shows" that Britons are "rather confused" about the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World.

Apparently one in eight claim to have seen the Colossus of Rhodes, a statue destroyed around 900 years ago. Perhaps they were thinking of that big chap who tries to entice you into his cafe for a drink after watching you wave away his neighbours who are doing exactly the same...

One in twenty say they have been to the Temple of Artemis at Ephesus in Turkey. And I, folks, am one of them.

Admittedly it doesn't look much of a temple these days and the bulk of stone has been nicked from the site to build other things. The one standing column has been cobbled together from lots of bits, probably not all originally from the same pillar.

But it is undeniably there.

Three percent of people claim to have been to the Statue of Zeus at Olympia too. I am not one of those. But I have been to the site where it stood and there are again some rather large chunks left of the building that housed it.

So if I saw a survey question that said "Have you seen..." I would say no, but if I saw "Have you been to..." and it was about a relic where the remains can clearly be seen (in my view this is true of the Temple of Artemis but not of the statue) then I'd struggle to express it in terms of "yes" or "no". Have you been to Stonehenge? But that's a ruin too...

I suspect that a few of the people surveyed may have been less confused about where they had been and what they saw than were confused at the meaning of the questions - though I admit I haven't seen the survey so cannot say with any certaincy in this case.

Every time I receive a survey, almost regardless of where it comes from, there is inevitably at least one - and sometimes every - question that requires a yes/no answer that simply cannot be answered that way. It's a tactic used by some to ensure that survey results meet their own ends. People who are confused will either not answer or will forget the big "if" in their mind and select the most appropriate - which may not be appropriate at all - answer.

I am reminded of a schoolteacher who once told us about a man who had died from drinking water. He had drunk several buckets of it in fact, trying to win a bet.

So... drinking water... is it dangerous? Please answer "Yes" or "no" only...