Funny political pictures

[glatt]

That pie chart is a perfect example of what UT is talking about.

Some intern took those numbers, which are probably real, and plugged them into a graphics program. Instead of doing a bar graph, which would make sense, they selected the pie chart option. The pie chart took the numbers (probably not as percentages, but as actual whole numbers) and created the pie. then the intern couldn't figure out how to make the % symbol show up so they labeled each slice with the number followed by a % sign. These are journalists, not mathematicians.

NPR ran into a similar math screw up when their journalist didn't know how to read a Murdoch financial report and made a wildly wrong report that they had to retract in shame.

[HungLikeJesus]

Originally Posted by glatt

That pie chart is a perfect example of what UT is talking about.

Some intern took those numbers, which are probably real, and plugged them into a graphics program. Instead of doing a bar graph, which would make sense, they selected the pie chart option. The pie chart took the numbers (probably not as percentages, but as actual whole numbers) and created the pie. then the intern couldn't figure out how to make the % symbol show up so they labeled each slice with the number followed by a % sign. These are journalists, not mathematicians.

NPR ran into a similar math screw up when their journalist didn't know how to read a Murdoch financial report and made a wildly wrong report that they had to retract in shame.

Actually it's not that complicated:

[BigV]

Originally Posted by glatt

snip--

NPR ran into a similar math screw up when their journalist didn't know how to read a Murdoch financial report and made a wildly wrong report that they had to retract in shame.

I remember when this happened, it was very embarrassing. NPR certainly does make mistakes. And they have a weekly segment for retracting errors too. I don't watch a lot of Fox News. But I have *never* seen a retraction from them, certainly nothing amounting to a weekly section for corrections. Does this exist? And if it does, why is it not more prominent?