No Calculators Required
Presented by Bill Cloud
Julian Scheer term associate professor
School of Journalism and Mass Communication
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
American Copy Editors Society Convention
Miami, Florida, April 20, 2007
Joe Nuxhall, age 15, is
shown in a Cincinnati Reds
uniform in Cincinnati, Ohio,
on June 10, 1944, when he
entered a game and pitched
two-thirds of an inning to
become the youngest player
to ever participate in a major
league game. (AP Photo)
A football field is 120 yards long (endline to endline)
Either way, the Baltic would not have
covered two football fields and most of a
third.
300 miles in 90 minutes =
100 miles every 30
minutes
Or 200 mph.
The fastest Indianapolis 500 ever:
185.981 mph, Arie Luyendyk, in 1990
Sgt. J.M. Praskey told the Syracuse
Herald American that t he race began
Saturday morning in Boston and that some
of the people arrested covered the 1 75
miles from the Massachusetts-New York
line to Syracuse in 90 minutes — averaging
115 mph.
How heavy is a paperweight?
Addition = sum
Subtraction = difference
Multiplication = product
Division = quotient
A distinction worth preserving?
If 50 percent more is X + 0.5X …
Then isn’t 6 times more equal to X + 6X?
350 + (6*350) =2,450, not 2,100
If 50 percent as much is X * 0.5 …
Then, isn’t 6 times as much equal to X* 6?
350 *6 = 2,100
Less than half as well?
“The average (mean) score
for blacks in percentage
terms was 49, and that for
whites was 72.”
Chernobyl
200,000 km2 * 0.386102159 =
77,220.4318 square miles.
An imprecise estimate
(200,000) becomes a precise
figure (77,220)
Another estimate becoming exact?
558 feet = 170 meters
902 feet = 275 meters
3,000 Miles
3,000 Miles
3,000 * 3,000 = 9 million square miles
Area of United States?
Wikipedia: 3,718,695 square miles
Atlapedia: 3,618,784 square miles
Enchanted Learning: 3,537,441 square
miles
CIA: 9,826,630 km2, or 3,794,083.1 square
miles
Take your pick!
But it was labeled mcf!
The chart belies the lede
A good rule of
thumb:
A trend is three
measurements in the
same direction.
So much for a trend!
• In 2001, there were 79 train-vehicle crashes.
• In 2002, there were 78.
• In 2003, there were 72.
The M&M Challenge
Courtesy of Phil Meyer
Knight Chair in Journalism
Regression toward the mean:
A school district views with pride
that its lowest-scoring school in
2006 on a standardized text shows
improvement in 2007.
But that’s what’s most likely to
happen. Extremely high or
extremely low scores tend to
regress toward the mean simply
because of random luck.