The City of Longmont sent a survey to 3,000 random residents (including us) with five pages of questions on a wide range of city services. How satisfied are you with weekly trash pick up? Is graffiti a major problem? Weeds? Homelessness? How often do you attend City Council meetings?

And then, out of nowhere, question 20:

Overall, how happy or unhappy are you with your life?

Very happy! Thank you for asking! But some number of people will answer “Very Unhappy” and what I want to know is: will that lessen the value of the rest of their answers? “Well, sure, this guy hates the quality of our tap water, but he also hates his life overall, so let’s just shred his whole survey.”