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Remedial Math required?

by Whaleoil on April 30, 2010

from Rachel at Throng

Every night so far in 2010, I’ve been doing a comparison of the first five stories on ONE News and 3 News on Throng.

One of the recurring trends is for both bulletins to do seemingly simple mathematical calculations incorrectly.

It’s happened three times recently and in each case, the price increases were over-exaggerated.  There never seems to be any corrections made, or accountability for these mistakes – which may enrage and worry the general population who believe and repeat their figures without ever knowing they were incorrect.

Here’s four recent examples:

  1. ONE News and 3 News incorrectly calculate new prices for if GST rises to 15% by just adding 2.5% to current prices (link)
  2. 3 News incorrectly calculates the new alcohol prices; saying a $40 bottle of whiskey would rise by $28.44 (instead of a rise of $10) (link)
  3. ONE News and 3 News incorrectly calculate the new tobacco prices; saying a $13.30 pack of 25 cigarettes will go up to $14.40 overnight and to $17 in 2012 (instead of $14.18 and $16.23 respectively) (link)
  4. 3 News misrepresents the police crime report, saying there were “451,000″ methamphetamine offences in 2009, “up 19% or 20,000 more offences”.  451,000 was the total recorded crimes for 2009, and the percentage change is incorrect. (link)

It is not surprising that every time maths is presented on the news, I am already doubting their calculations.

To be fair to the repeaters they are probably repeating a press release from whatever slant (Labour’s) the editor wants to put on a story. Actually I can’t be fair, the teleprompter repeaters just read what is put in front of them, no thinking is required.

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  • steve

    They got it wrong, but who taught them the method?
    Tomorrow’s schools haha

  • toby

    This would be funny if it wasn’t so facepalm.

  • axeman

    As commented before, Annette King, deputy leader of the opposition can’t do math either. Annette appeared on the ‘late’ Sunrise a while back and when asked a question on GST pointed out to people that they would be paying 20% more for items like bread and butter. FTW?
    As GST is applied to everything, so following the logic of Annette, that would mean a pencil would go up by 20% and a new LED TV would go up by 20%.
    If say bread from the supermarket costs you $1.00. Of that $1.00, $0.11 goes straight to the tax man in the form of GST, giving you a pre-GST price of $0.89. If GST is to increase to 15% the new retail price would be $1.02. So, how does that compare to a 20% increase? Well, she get the first number right, and that is about it. A whooping 2% increase.
    So, Annette is a massive 90% out on her figures, either she is lying through her teeth or simply struggles with basic math.

  • lofty

    At the risk of stating the obvious, its never about accuracy is it, it is all about scare mongering.
    Helens legacy is alive & well.

  • jeffw

    Whale, it’s not only the maths which is bad; the English is often appalling as well.

    Re your last para, agree with you, but how come people who don’t have to think too much command such great salaries? Reduce the salaries and the number of ads would seem to be useful steps.

  • johnqpublic

    axe­man, it’s because 15% is 20% more than 12.5%, but clearly the rate of GST is 20% more, not the total retail price as King claimed. She was intentionally misleading. This sort of misleading use of maths is endemic within the MSM. Particularly stoopid examples often go the other way too, like “Bollard announces 1% hike in the OCR” when they really mean a one percentage point increase(in fact an OCR of 2.5% increased to 3.5% is a 40% increase but they never say that) How 1% could be described as a ‘hike’ anyway is also a mystery.

  • grizz

    Sounds like King has been smoking the same stuff her daughter was when she crashed the ministerial car.