April Fool’s Day for the Private Investigator
Every Investigator needs to understand Twyman’s Law, which states:
Any piece of data or evidence that looks interesting or unusual is probably wrong!
Archive for the 'Statistics' Category
Misleading RCMP data undermines counterfeiting claims by Michael Geist
“The RCMP has been the single most prominent source for claims about the impact of counterfeiting in Canada since its 2005 Economic Crime Report pegged the counterfeiting cost at between $10 to 30 billion dollars annually.”
“Responding to an Access to Information Act request for the sources behind the $30 billion claim, Canada’s national police force last week admitted that the figures were based on “open source documents found on the Internet.” In other words, the RCMP did not conduct any independent research on the scope or impact of counterfeiting in Canada, but rather merely searched for news stories on the Internet and then stood silent while lobby groups trumpeted the figure before Parliament.”
The nomenclature of big numbers varies depending on who writes them.
In the USA, a billion is 109 (a 1 followed by 9 zeroes) and a trillion is 1012. This seems straight-forward until you realize that Americans spell differently than the British and other Commonwealth countries. Some further thought might be in order.
In the UK and Germany, a billion is 1012 and a trillion is 1018. Now this makes more sense to me.
Bi means twice or 1 million squared for a billion, or 1012, as 1 million is 106. Tri is three times, or 1018, or 1 million cubed. The same follows for quadrillion being 1 million to the 4th power, or 1024, rather than the American 1015.
This confusion means having to get clarification on all large numbers unless all the zeroes are present, or they come from a recent article written by a bona fide Economist or Statistician who will use the American interpretation of these large numbers.
Now I’m sure you’ll never be confused by this again!
A frivolous email campaign during 2001 to have people record their religion as “Jedi” on the national censuses of Australia, Canada, New Zealand, England, and Whales was surprisingly effective in distorting the census results.
This campaign succeeded in having 70,000 people in Australia record their religion as Jedi, 20,000 in Canada, and 53,000 in New Zealand. In England and Whales 390,000 stated their religion as Jedi, surpassing Sikhism, Judaism, and Buddhism, and making it the fourth largest reported religion.
Does ID theft really cost $48 billion a year?
This article reminds us that we should view all statistics with skepticism until we know who produced them and understand how they were derived.