85/15

2005, November 27 - 6:49am — afreytes

Let's have some fun with statistics!

I read somewhere that in statistics there's a 85/15 rule. Basically, the rule states, any sufficiently clarified statistic can de-evolve into a ratio of 85 percent of one thing to 15 percent of another thing.

"It is easy to lie with statistics. It is hard to tell the truth without it." --Andrejs Dunkels

Example: 85% of the world's money is in the hands of only 15% of the world's people.

Notice that I used money instead of wealth, and people instead of governments. The sentence: 85% of the world's wealth is in the hands of only 15% of the world's governments. Just doesn't have the same feeling of true-ness.

Example: Only 85% percent of working airplanes are in the air at any one time.

Sounds believable, doesn't it? The key is in saying: working airplanes. Because by working you understand that they are in the air, and the unspoken of 15% are milling about in airports.

"There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics." --Benjamin Disraeli

Example: 85% percent of this blogs visitors, that arrived via a search engine, where looking up the words "melaomelao".

This one is really true. Thanks to somebody mentioning melaomelao.com in the comments I have a veritable throng of people visiting my blog while they were actually searching for pictures of naked puertorican women! Could there be something more disheartening? I mean, here I am trying to give you some quality writing, some food for thought. But I mostly get hits from people two heartbeats away from jacking up ye' olde cyclops! If you are one of those. Understand this: what I have here amounts to no more than softcore smut for the neurons!

Here you go, this is the link you're looking for!: www.melaomelao.com.

The site is dead, however. Hum! I would surely get thousands of hits a day if I featured naked wo... nah, that's not the way I want to make money. Not that there is much wrong about it. But it's not for me, I guess.