Statistics

This is nothing to do with books or writing, but it’s just something that I’ve been curious about.

Last night, as I was waiting for Journeyman to start (another time travel thing – I’m already invoking the BTTF clause, as the season finale next week looks fraught with confusion and time travel anomalies) there were about five minutes of adverts. I always look at the small print at the bottom of the screen, as this is where it usually hides the real information ie a certain beauty product claims 80ish% of women tested said there is definitely a possibility that they have less visible wrinkles, and at the bottom of the screen it says 35 women tested. That’s hardly representative of the population.

Anyway, there was an advertisement for an early pregnancy test and at the bottom of the screen it said it showed the right result for pregnant women 51% of the time! 51% effective??? Surely, by law of averages, if you flipped a coin, you’d get a smiliar result. Am I missing something here? Aren’t these tests very expensive, and doesn’t the advert suggest that it will be wrong a massive 49% of the time? Or was I just tired when the ad was shown and completely misunderstood?

In other news, I’m still having to rest my voice, so relying mainly on email (when I can be bothered to use the laptop) and texts. Or was. I have just become aware that 100% of mobile phones do not work correctly if dropped in a cup of coffee (1 mobile tested)!!!