I wrote a note last week to a talk radio host after he finished an interview with the pro-naptime-in-the-workplace activist whose been making the rounds;
I think someone should pull all these studies together that extrapolate “lost productivity” figures and total them up.
I suspect we’ll discover that we no longer have an economy at all.
NYT Public Editor Daniel Orkent;
One of the appealing things about the complaints I receive about innumeracy at The Times is their ecumenical origin; when it comes to how it handles numbers, The Times is an equal opportunity offender. Like a bad cough that spreads its germs indiscriminately, numbers misapplied and ill-explained irritate the sensibilities of the right and the left, the drug company official and the animal rights activist, the art collector and the Jets fan.
Number fumbling arises, I believe, not from mendacity but from laziness, carelessness or lack of comprehension. I’ll put myself in the latter category (as some readers no doubt will as well, after they’ve read through my representation of the numbers that follow). Most of the journalists I know who enter the profession comfortable with numbers write about sports, where debate about the meaning of statistics is a daily competition, or economics, a field in which interpretation of numbers will no more likely produce inarguable results than will finger painting.
[…]
Numbers issued by those measuring criminal enterprise (“In Mexico, drug trafficking is a $250-billion-a-year industry” [story]) or the economic impact of a new stadium (“Bloomberg said that he expected the arena to generate about $400 million a year through various economic activities” [story]) don’t deserve to be published without challenge; it doesn’t serve agencies who want to fight drug trafficking to underestimate the problem, nor can any politician support a development project without hyping its potential benefit.
Still, The Times persists. In November, when New York City Comptroller William Thompson released a study purporting to show that New Yorkers purchase more than $23 billion in counterfeit goods each year, The Times repeated the analysis as if it were credible [story]. Quick arithmetic would have demonstrated that $23 billion would work out to roughly $8,000 per city household, a number ludicrous on its face. (In the Web version of this column, I’ve linked to an excellent dissection of Thompson’s report, by freelance journalist Felix Salmon.)
[…]
… [I]n the movie business, where records are about as meaningful as promises. “Shrek 2” is not, as an article in The Times Magazine had it in November, “the third-highest-grossing movie of all time” [story]; if you consider inflation, it’s not even in the Top 10 (and “Titanic” is far from No. 1). This record-mania has spread everywhere. “Record-high gas prices” summoned up last year weren’t even close; at its summer peak, gas cost 80 cents a gallon less than it did in 1981. Says economics reporter David Leonhardt, “Treating 2004 dollars the same as 1981 dollars isn’t much different from treating dollars the same as rupees. The fact that 10 is a bigger number than 9 doesn’t make 10 rupees worth more than $9; nor does it make $10 from 2004 worth more than $9 from 1981.” Inflation isn’t the only culprit stalking the record books: “Record deficits” may not be records when they’re expressed as a percentage of gross domestic product, a far more reasonable measure than any raw number.
I’m less generous than Orkent. The failure to factor in the most basic mathematical context – like adjusting for inflation – reveals that modern journalism doesn’t make these “oversights” because of laziness, or even innumeracy.
The do it because a headline that reads “Gasoline Prices Still Well Below All Time Highs” just doesn’t have quite the right ring to it.
Here’s another example.
The gay-friendy press recently reported on how the crude marriage rate increased in British Columbia after same-sex marriage had been imposed there. Reports heralded this as a rebuttal of the concerns that marriage would decline further.
But.
The crude marriage rate is calculated from the number of marriages performed in BC and from the number of residents of BC. It rolls together the marriages of both-sex and same-sex couples; and it rolls together the marriages of residents and nonresidents (including foreigners).
Two problems with the way the rate was reported.
First, to do an appropriate before and after analysis, it is necessary to compare the rate for both-sex couples apart from same-sex couples. It is the influence of man-woman couples that was at issue with the concerns about the decline of marriage in a post-SSM scenario.
So while it is valid to count all marriages regardless of the type of couples, it is also important to compare apples and apples.
Second problem: while marriages that involved nonresidents was a tiny percentage for both-sex couples, half of same-sex couples incuded nonresidents — most from the nearby states in America. The before and after analysis should include a marriage rate for BC residents.
As it turns out, the marriage rate of both-sex couples declined. It declined for BC residents. However, this was masked by the addition of same-sex couples and that addition was inflated by 200% due to the number of nonresidents included.
The upshot: the marriage rate declined in BC but it was reported as having suddenly increased. in one sense, the higher marriage rate was factual but it was reported out of context and without an appropriate before and after analysis.
Also, of course, a single year, or a couple of years, does not a trend make. Yet it was reported that a long-established downward trend had been reversed. The marriage rate in BC includes nonresidents and that makes the rate vulnerable to sudden changes in tourism, for exmple, due to border and security issues. Since both-sex couples can marry at home, rather than at a honeymooon destination in beautiful BC, their rate of marriage in BC could go up and down a percentage of two annually. On the other hand, same-sex couples can’t marry in the US — except in Massachusetts — and the surge in the first year attracted many Americans which should have been an obvious flag for those reporters who wrote about this subject recently.
Sorry, typo corrections:
1. “It is the influence on man-woman couples that was at issue …”
2. “… that addition was inflated 100% due to the number of nonresidents included …”
The average journalist doesn’t have time to check sources or verify facts. If the facts “ring true” to them, they go ahead and publish them. Unfortunately the average journalist is well to the left of the political spectrum, has no contact with anyone who is religious, etc. So the people writing in the MSM often write in a way that reflects their leftist worldview, and don’t realize how mistaken their “facts” are.
In the olden days – BB (Before Blogs), the MSM had basically a free ride to publish the stories with whatever spin they wanted. We never knew they were not fact, unless the story happened in our back yard and we knew the truth.
Many times I have been interviewed for a newspaper article on aspects of my job. I sat with the reporter answering her questions, watching her write it down and feeling satisfied that she had a good understanding of the facts.
Then I read the article published in the newspaper. Facts twisted or outright incorrect. Innuendo put in by the reporter that shed a whole different light on the truth. Then the phone calls started because of couse the public read this story and instead of making the issue clearer in their minds, it answered their fears and misconceptions about the issue.
Call it laziness, call it spinning the facts, call it whatever – the fact is that the MSM can make facts and/or statistics say whatever they want, call it “journalistic freedom” and get away with it.
The worst is when they use a Headline that totally belies the facts in the story below.
Thank god we are in the AB (after blog) era where these “facts” are being exposed for what they are – manipulation of the truth.
This kind of “miscalculation” also happens in Canada’s rickety judicial system (despite the fact that the readers of the Globe and Mail think our judges are the best). In their ermine robes, from their ivory tower far above the lives of us mere mortals, the Supreme Court of Canada (SCC) makes law based on theory, rather than fact. Our judicial overlords often disregard entirely the actual effect of their rulings. Sometimes they’re “shocked” at what happens in real life as a result of their shenanigans. (No wonder Professor Rob Martin wrote a book called The Most Dangerous Branch about our SCC.)
In the following excerpt from an essay by Rory Leishman, “Robed Dictators: Legislators for Life”–it received Honourable Mention for the National Magazine Awards in 1998–he mentions the infamous Askov case:
“Despite this fine restatement of the classic arguments for judicial restraint, the Supreme Court of Canada recklessly plunged into a radical reform of the law in R. v. Askov (1990). In this case, it dismissed charges against an accused who had waited 23 months from the time he was committed to trial in Ontario to his actual trail date. In the Supreme Court’s judgment, 23 months constituted an inordinate delay that violated his right ‘to be tried within a reasonable time,’ as guaranteed in Section 11b of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Prior to the Charter, the courts would have let the legislative branch of government determine the maximum reasonable time. In the Askov case, the Supreme Court decreed that regardless of the circumstances, a delay ‘in the range of some six to eight months between committal and trial might be deemed to be the outside limit of what is reasonable.’
“The unintended consequences of this sweeping decision have been calamitous. University of Calgary’s Knopff and Morton report: ‘In Ontario, 43,640 charges were stayed, dismissed, or withdrawn on the basis of Askov by mid-1991. These included at least one charge of manslaughter, 817 ‘extreme assault’ offences (e.g., assault with a weapon, assault on a police officer, or assault causing bodily harm), 290 sexual assault charges, 402 lesser sex offences, and 11,623 charges of impaired driving.’
In August 1991, at an Advanced Legal Studies conference in Cambridge, England, Mr. Justice Peter Cory, the author of the Askov decision, confessed that he was ‘shocked’ by its aftermath. He blamed Crown counsel for failing to tell the Supreme Court how many people the ruling might affect. That’s a lame excuse. Judge Cory should have remembered Judge McLachlin’s words: Crown attorneys have neither the necessary expertise nor the responsibility to advise judges on the implications of the court’s rulings on complex public policy questions.”
(Mightn’t Cory, J. have “asked” for such common sense information in the “ASKov” case?!)
The rest of the essay is available at conservativeforum.org
Scary, isn’t it, that institutions, like the MSM and the SCC, which many people still accept as valid authorities, have such abysmal professional standards? I only hope that the iconoclasm of the blogs reaches enough Canadians before it’s too late.
re: naptime-in-the-workplace activism
Didn’t the last LPC regime define this …and
wasn’t Shephanie Dijon their poster boy…5 years of naptime at the wokplace on the Kyoto file??
Look at all the numeracy below.Wow$er. Bullskgt baffles brains, again.
This takes twenty-five seconds to read, 9 out of ten times, according to a recent Pole. Don’t believe? Do the math. The anonymous staff at ctv did the math; it’s correct.
The old saw, “I don’t have two cents to rub together”, is now a fossil.
According to Citoyen Dion, Socialism, which abolished mathematics, and is the best economics of all, makes all equally rich/poor. Dion, Dear-Wanna-Be-Leader knows his eco-nomics. Right, Kyoto? …-
It doesn’t make ‘cents’ to keep the penny: study
Updated Fri. Feb. 16 2007 11:07 PM ET
CTV.ca News Staff
A new study says it doesn’t make ‘cents’ to keep the penny.
In fact, only 37 per cent of Canadians still use the coin for purchases, found a survey conducted by Desjardins Group.
According to economists with the group, there are about 20 billion pennies in circulation — amounting to about 600 per Canadian.
…
Francois Dupuis, vice-president and chief economist at Desjardins’ Economic Studies Department, said he doesn’t think removing the penny will increase prices.
“Cash transaction amounts would be rounded symmetrically to the nearest five cents. For example, transactions where the final price would be $9.98, $9.99, $10.01 or $10.02 would go for $10. Those of $10.03, $10.04 or even $10.06, would go for $10.05,” Dupuis said.
The poll, which surveyed 658 people from Quebec, Ontario and the Atlantic and Western provinces, found that Canadians use more valuable coins more often.
Research showed that loonies and toonies are used by 66 per cent of Canadians making purchases. However, quarters are only used by 58 per cent of the population while dimes and nickels are used 50 per cent of the time.
Fifty-six per cent of respondents said they collected pennies and usually gave them away to children, charities or at church.
The study also found a gender difference when it comes to loose change — 44 per cent of women use their pennies for purchases compared to 31 per cent of men. $$$$
http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNews/20070216/penny_070216/20070216?hub=Canada
I find similar record style reporting in Baghdad casualties.
33 dead, largest number since Groundhog day.
46 dead, largest number since Valentines day 1 year ago.
12 dead, largest number with ear infections.
8 dead, largest number with red sweaters on.
up or down, its always the largest. and without keeping a tally you cant check them. a google would get you a million sites with similar reporting style.
this one would never make CBCpravda or CTV(tass)
http://www.spiegel.de/international/spiegel/0,1518,465438,00.html
The Western Canada Lottery Corporation says it made a mistake when it posted online what appeared to be winning numbers for its Millionaire for Life draw — which doesn’t take place until the end of February.
national newswatch
Governments are running gambling frauds, fleecing the poor and rich alike.
Win biggggg; Buy 100 tickets for each draw. Your odds to win bigggg increases when you buy more than one ticket; even better odds when you buy 1000 or more tickets for each draw. This ass-umes that the house is not crooked.
Read: “The Lottery in Babylon” is a short story written by Jorge Luis Borges in 1941. … Initially, the lottery had the usual material rewards; later, …-
Regarding inflation: have wages for the average stiff kept up with the inflationary effects on costs? We know they haven’t so I don’t need all these business leaders telling me how a gallon of gas is a bargain when my pay raises have been less than half of his.
This innumeracy stems from the left’s disdain for people, especially people who have to do things. it is part and parcel with their intelelctual vacuity.
They would surely agree with me that illiteracy is bad and condemns one to a difficult life where things occur that are neither understood or expressed.
However, they glorify their lack of numeracy. Numeracy is as important as literacy. Thus they can supoport Stalin although he killed at least as many people than Hitler. Pol Pot was just mis-understood. Mass-murder? numbers are meaningless to them.