We woke up last Friday (in Oz) and Thursday (in the US). As usual, we scanned a selection of online newspapers, magazines and blogs: “Eurozone crisis will cost world’s poorest countries $238bn” blared the UK Guardian (once known as the Manchester Grauniad because of its typographic lapses). Really, not $237 billion or $239 billion? Perhaps this was just a dodgy headline. Sadly it was not — the article soberly reports that the cost will be exactly this figure, an impossible level of certainty for an economic forecast!

Many other such examples come to mind. On 18 Oct 2006, the venerable

Continue reading Bad numbers are bad news