Phillyist’s Math Problems
Their article on city corruption, Audit Reveals City Employees Stole $21 Million Worth Of Office Supplies, came through my feed reader, but since leaving a comment requires registration, I’ll just do it here instead:
Let’s say it’s 100 cell phones, with each cell phone costing $199. That comes out to $19,900. Now let’s say 100 employees did the same thing. That comes to $190,000. Wow!
By my math, 10^4 * $199 is $1.99M. Sorry, Don Montrey and the Phillyist, this kind of mathematical typo is simply unforgivable. It’s why “journalist” is a term that applies to someone working with editorial oversight to catch and prevent these sorts of stupid errors, and why bloggers simply aren’t there yet.
Update: I should have toned down the weekend snark, as you can see from the comments, I neglected a power of ten (wrote 10^3) in my correction, although the sum did come out ok. I guess we all need editors.
This entry was posted on Sunday, May 11th, 2008 at 4:35 pm and is tagged with editorial oversight, montrey, math problems, stupid errors, power of ten, phillyist, snark, typo, office supplies, corruption, journalist, sorts, cell phone, editors, cell phones. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback.
on May 11th, 2008 at 4:39 pm
Thinking about it, if people actually read Twitter, this snark job should have probably gone there…
on May 11th, 2008 at 10:25 pm
Or you could, you know, send an email to the writer or the editors (there is, by the way, editorial oversight) and point out the need for a correction. We’re a bunch of English majors without calculators, so pardon us for the bad math. We’re happy to make the change. Thanks for the correction.
on May 12th, 2008 at 12:14 pm
By my math, 100 * 100 = 10^4, not 10^3. But the end result of $1.99M is fine.
on May 12th, 2008 at 7:06 pm
That’s hilarious… i hate counting zeros.
on May 13th, 2008 at 9:37 am
So it’s “hilarious” when you make a mistake but “unforgivable” when this other guy at Phillyist makes a math error? An error that really had no effect on the point of his piece, btw.