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Mathphobia
“Go through some of the archives of any newspaper or TV station—even some of the most prestigious—and you can find astounding examples of bad math, inept comparisons, statistical tomfoolery.”
—James Ledbetter, journalist, editor & author,
in 1997 “College Issue,” Rolling Stone
in 1997 “College Issue,” Rolling Stone
Editor’s Note: That just doesn't add up.
CALLING ALL USU JCOM ALUMS: Where are you? We're updating our alumni list. Please send your current position, title, contact info (including email), graduation year and any news to ted.pease@usu.edu.
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An old rule on my desk:
ReplyDeleteIf there are numbers in a story, there's a 25-percent chance the reporter got them wrong.
If the reporter added or subtracted to arrive at the numbers, fifty-fifty chances; multiplication or division, or, horrors, algebra, one-hundred
percent chance dead wrong.
peace
hodges
Too many reporters also don't understand basic accounting principles -- don't know the difference between a budget and a financial statement or between a balance sheet and an income statement (or that an income statement also includes expenditures). Yet they write about government or corporate finances, and from their reporting we base our understanding of what's happening.
ReplyDeleteThis post reminds me of an incident yesterday in the TSC. Tim Vitale and I were waiting to use an ATM. A student was ahead of us. She first tried to get $222, but the machine balked, informing her she needed to ask for cash in multiples of $20. So then she asked for $250. Tim’s comment: She must be a journalism major.
ReplyDeleteMark
Mark:
ReplyDeleteGot that right. J majors seem PROUD of their innumeracy. True story: shortly after I came to USU (pre-cambrian), I was exhorting a beginning newswriting class about care with numbers. Some reporters are so bad at numbers that they'll write that an increase from, say, 10% to 20% is a 10% jump. Blank looks, and I had to explain it. The very next day's SLTrib had a P1 story on the number of women faculty at Weber, up from 10% to 20% and--I swear I am not making this up--the headline and lead reported a 10% increase.
Ted
On Nov 3, 2009, at 7:37 AM, Bud wrote:
ReplyDeleteSounds “fuzzy” to me.
TP: Is it any wonder we can't understand reports on the budget, health care, Afghanistan, etc...?
Bud: They count on that, Prof. The numbers become so big as to be unintelligible to the common word person. I’m at the tipping point of disenfranchisement. Is that even a word?
Ted: Sadly, Bud, so am I--and I'm trying to TEACH these little buggers about their social responsibility. The bureaucrats count on the fact that their garbage is indecipherable, and that journalists and hoi polloi have neither the tools nor the patience to figure it out.
baaaaaaa.
78 percent of us agree with you. 11 percent don't. 5 percent don't care. 9 percent didn't open this email. What! The figures don't add up. Hmmmmm.
ReplyDelete