News reporting with brains

The use of statistics (and numbers in general) in news reporting is often a cause of concern. Sometimes, you really wonder if there is anyone with a brain involved in the process that goes from observing a piece of news, through writing the script to presenting it. This comes through particularly strongly when numbers that make the eyebrows raise are thrown about with no thought and no comment.

This morning, I heard on Newsbeat on BBC Radio 1 (don't ask) that it has been estimated that there are around 2 million potholes on Britain's roads, and that it will cost over 10 billion pounds to fix this. Story done - on to some bit of pop trivia.

But just a minute. Didn't anyone even think to do some basic sums here? If 2 million potholes cost £10 billion to fix, that's £5,000 a pothole. Now, okay, some will be expensive because of the difficulties closing lanes on a motorway or whatever. But the vast majority seem to involve half an hour with a couple of fat blokes and a barrel of tarmac. With optional addition of a road roller. In our previous house we had a space large enough to park around 10 cars surfaced with tarmac. This cost around £200 (not counting preparation, which wouldn't apply with the road). Most potholes are a fraction of a metre across. So let's say £50. Where does the other £4,950 go? Perhaps people should offer adopt a pothole. They sort it out and we pay them £2,000. Winners all round.

That's my top-of-the-head, ill-informed take on it. Anyone could do even better with a bit of research. But what irritates me is that the people on Newsbeat didn't exert a braincell to notice this price and to comment on it. It's not enough to parrot facts - you need to think about what they mean and give us a sensible commentary, particularly with the kind of audience that Newsbeat has. Come on news media. Get the thinking caps on.

Picture from Wikipedia

Comments

Why I hate opera

If I'm honest, the title of this post is an exaggeration to make a point. I don't really hate opera. There are a couple of operas - notably Monteverdi's Incoranazione di Poppea and Purcell's Dido & Aeneas - that I quite like. But what I do find truly sickening is the reverence with which opera is treated, as if it were some particularly great art form. Nowhere was this more obvious than in ITV's recent gut-wrenchingly awful series Pop Star to Opera Star , where the likes of Alan Tichmarsh treated the real opera singers as if they were fragile pieces on Antiques Roadshow, and the music as if it were a gift of the gods. In my opinion - and I know not everyone agrees - opera is: Mediocre music Melodramatic plots Amateurishly hammy acting A forced and unpleasant singing style Ridiculously over-supported by public funds I won't even bother to go into any detail on the plots and the acting - this is just self-evident. But the other aspects need some ex

Is 5x3 the same as 3x5?

The Internet has gone mildly bonkers over a child in America who was marked down in a test because when asked to work out 5x3 by repeated addition he/she used 5+5+5 instead of 3+3+3+3+3. Those who support the teacher say that 5x3 means 'five lots of 3' where the complainants say that 'times' is commutative (reversible) so the distinction is meaningless as 5x3 and 3x5 are indistinguishable. It's certainly true that not all mathematical operations are commutative. I think we are all comfortable that 5-3 is not the same as 3-5. However. This not true of multiplication (of numbers). And so if there is to be any distinction, it has to be in the use of English to interpret the 'x' sign. Unfortunately, even here there is no logical way of coming up with a definitive answer. I suspect most primary school teachers would expands 'times' as 'lots of' as mentioned above. So we get 5 x 3 as '5 lots of 3'. Unfortunately that only wor

Which idiot came up with percentage-based gradient signs

Rant warning: the contents of this post could sound like something produced by UKIP. I wish to make it clear that I do not in any way support or endorse that political party. In fact it gives me the creeps. Once upon a time, the signs for a steep hill on British roads displayed the gradient in a simple, easy-to-understand form. If the hill went up, say, one yard for every three yards forward it said '1 in 3'. Then some bureaucrat came along and decided that it would be a good idea to state the slope as a percentage. So now the sign for (say) a 1 in 10 slope says 10% (I think). That 'I think' is because the percentage-based slope is so unnatural. There are two ways we conventionally measure slopes. Either on X/Y coordiates (as in 1 in 4) or using degrees - say at a 15° angle. We don't measure them in percentages. It's easy to visualize a 1 in 3 slope, or a 30 degree angle. Much less obvious what a 33.333 recurring percent slope is. And what's a 100% slope

Search This Blog