The Bob Baker’s Newsthinking article “Math for journalists” addressed a fear of many journalists: simple mathematics. I would consider myself to be a part of this group of reporters who either don’t care much for math, or care, but don’t remember how to do it. According to the article, this phobia exists in even otherwise “smart reporters” who have mastered the usage of words but not the usage of high school math. The article also cites a remark published by several newspapers that quoted President Clinton as saying “every 12 seconds another woman is beaten,” and that at that ratio, it would equate to “nearly 900,000 victims a year.” Doing the multiplication shows that if another woman was beaten every 12 seconds, there would be about 2.6 million victims a year, which is more than twice what Clinton said. The point was no reporter or editor caught this mistake, and it would not have been overlooked if anyone had simply done a few easy calculations. Reporters and editors must never take for granted any numerical values that are thrown their way without first checking the accuracy of the calculations that produced these figures.
Beneath the article is a short section of tutorials on how to calculate percentages, ratios, rates, averages, means and medians, which I found to be very helpful, and a good reference for simple math calculations. These formulas comprise the majority of calculations any reporter would typically have to do when writing a story. Although figuring these numbers only requires knowledge of addition, subtraction, multiplication and division, it is not hard for one to forget to process of steps to use when figuring something such as a percentage or average. This forgetfulness occurs especially when the processes are used very infrequently. Most journalism students, at least that I am aware of, are not required to take any substantial math courses while earning their degrees. This being the case, I can understand why many, including myself, would forget things we haven’t utilized since high school. Perhaps if journalism programs at universities offered courses like Mathematics for Reporters or Numbers for Writers, today’s journalists would be more on-the-ball when it comes to math. If the University of Florida did, however, offer once of those courses, I’d curse myself for suggesting it and having to attend it.
The second article I read was the Steve Rushin article “A Billion People Can Be Wrong.” This article focused primarily on the common misconception that the Super Bowl is “an event watched by an estimated 1 billion people worldwide.” Rushin questions the validity of this estimation and, citing evidence from Nielsen Media Research, writes that the 2005 Super Bowl (the article says “last year’s Super Bowl” but was written in 2006) was viewed by less than 100,000 North Americans, which is not even one-tenth of the supposed 1 billion. He goes on to write that according to Initiative, a New York-based media research firm, 98 percent of the 2005 Super Bowl’s audience was based in North America, meaning that only 2 million people outside of this continent watch our nation’s biggest football game of the year. This leaves us well shy of the estimated 1 billion viewers.
Rushin writes that this myth is not a lie, but the definition of hype, and no one minds the drastic over-billing of the game. He also credits most sports fans with what Ernest Hemingway called a “built-in, shock-proof” ability to spot myths and exaggerations. In my opinion, Rushin is giving sports fans, and the public in general, too much credit. Although I have no actual figures to support this, I’d be willing to bet that at least a handful of every 10 citizens of this country couldn’t tell you within millions the population of the United States, or the world. Perhaps many people just accept this estimation, and refuse to question it because it’s not worth getting that worked up over if it’s invalid. Realistically, how many people would really throw a huge fit if they found out only 100 million people watched the Super Bowl instead of 1 billion? I don’t think that would stop anyone from watching or not watching it. Nonetheless, I think Rushin’s point should have been the public should always question statistics that are as extreme as the one given for the audience of the Super Bowl. For a football game, I think the audience could probably let this monstrous exaggeration slide, but for more important statistics such as crime rates or taxes, readers and viewers should be more skeptical of what the media tell them.
The final article I read was “Margin of Error” by Robert Niles, which I found to be more confusing than helpful. He made his point well at the end, but the bulk of the story was too mathematical for my liking, and not in the sense that the “Math for journalists” article was. The “Math” article provided useful formulas for commonly-used calculations, while “Margin of Error” used the vocabulary of scholarly mathematicians to explain what margin of error actually is. Niles cited an instance in which a false claim was made that Clinton’s advantage over Dole in the upcoming election was slipping because the margin of error in the poll used to make that assertion was not taken into account. I think Niles lost me when he started talking about standard deviations and confidence intervals. I wish he would’ve used simpler terms when describing how the margin of error affects comprehending poll results. I took the most out of this article from the final paragraph, in which Niles encourages readers to “never place too much faith in one week’s poll or survey.” He also writes the only way to get a good idea of what’s going on is by looking at several polls instead of only one. I think using polls in reporting can be a dangerous practice, especially if it is not explicit what exactly the poll is showing. If the sample was not random, or the questions were slanted, or the sample was not large enough, poll results could be very misleading.
