Friday, January 05, 2007

A lesson on percentages

In a very technical way, CTV is correct. That is if you consider .34% a smaller percentage. However most people round things up or down to the nearest whole number when working with percentages. But if you want to spin things why bother with trite details? A comment by Daryl over at SDA. Looks like the staff over at CTV want to play number games.

This zinger from the CTV web site:

"The size of cabinet has increased from 27 to 32 positions, with a smaller percentage of women on the team."

I tried to use my slide rule but couldn't tell the difference. Went back to using a calculator to determine that the percentage change in women went from 6/27=22.22% to 7/32=21.88%. So rounding, that would be a change from 22% to 22%.

Clearly this is a big news story and should have dominated the day's events.

Posted by: Daryl at January 4, 2007 09:26 PM

Maybe this will help them to learn a bit... Statistics Help for Journalists.

3 comments:

Chimera said...

*sigh* Slow news day...

I think it would probably be safe to file this one under "Picking Fly Shit Out Of Pepper While Wearing Boxing Gloves."

Chimera said...

Slow news day for CTV, I mean.

My brain is slow. It might be frozen. It's been snowing here for the last twelve hours or so, and at a time of year when I'm used to hearing lawn mowers, I'm hearing the scrape-scratch of shovels as people try to clear the sidewalks...

Tim said...

You were right without the clarification Chimera....

Not saying I am sorry to hear about the weather woes in the Vancouver area. Its about bloody time you folks out there joined the rest of Canada and discovered what winter is!... smile I am kidding. This is not a good thing for my family. My Aunt passed away there on the 29th of Dec. at the ripe young age of 92. Her funeral is tomorrow and Unfortunately I can not make it.