Instant opinion A recent online poll posed the question “Should female athletes be paid the same as men for the work they do?’’ In all, $13,147(44\%)$said “Yes,’’ $15,182(50\%)$said “No,’’ and the remaining $1448$ said, “Don’t know.” In spite of the large sample size for this survey, we can’t trust the result. Why not?

Female athletes should be paid the same as men for the work they undertake, according to an online poll. In that poll, $13,147$ people replied yes ($44$ percent), $15,182$ said no ($50$ percent), and $1448$ indicated they didn't know.

A simple random sample (SRS) of size n is made up of $n$ people chosen from the population with an equal chance of being the sample that is actually chosen.

This is a voluntary answer sampling online survey. Voluntary response samples draw people who are passionate about the topic, resulting in bias. The sample is biased since it does not represent the entire population; rather, it represents a subset of the population with strong opinions. We can't trust the results since it is biased in favor of people who feel strongly about the problem being surveyed, notwithstanding the high sample size.