Bad Statistics In The Media - #26

[brachiopod]

Following Tony Blairs speach about nuclear power earlier today, a piece on ITV News compared the cost of the main producing methods. They quoted;

2.6p / KWh for Nuclear
2.3p/KWh for coal/gas
&
5.6p/KWh for wind (sic)

They went on to explain that with forecast taxes on CO2 emissions, the coal/gas figure will be around the 3.3p/KWh.

All well and good - I can't argue with those figures without doing my own research.

However, they then go on to explain that such is the consumption of energy in the UK that...(effectively)

"Well, if you don't understand these figures, it's like turning on a billion 60W bulbs...."

Now, I'm sorry, but taking a billion to mean the Systeme Internationale definition of 10^9 or 1,000,000,000, the human brain has no concept of what a billion is - we simply can not imagine a million let alone a billion - apart from saying 'ooh that's alot'. (Scientists, geologists, accountants etc will deal in millions and billions as a mathematical figure, not even they can imagine a million volts, years or pounds)

So why does ITV News attempt to explain a concept to the man-in-the-street (or the man-on-his-sofa) by ignoring the familiar unit charge (pence per KWh) that appears on his energy bill, and replacing it with a concept of a thousand million lightbulbs that no-one can really imagine?

[kempie]

They should have said "it's like turning on a 60 billion watt bulb"

;-)

[jake-the-peg]

I stopped watching ITV's parody of a news service a long time ago for exactly this sort of drivel.

I guess at least they're trying to provide some sort of context - Might have been better to say it was like ten 100W bulbs for every man woman and child in the country - but that doesn't sound so impresssive!

Incidently what I do is to consider a 1 m square piece of graph paper - this contains a million tiny squares - a billion is a thousand page book of such sheets.

I give up after a billion

[Loosehead]

Well all I can think of Brachio is that TV, especially news have to cater for the lowest common denominator. You touched on it yourself, it's their way of saying to the trolls "a lot". Have you also noticed that when they are talking about a DNA match they always say things like "the chances of the DNA not belonging to X are several Squillion to 1". I don't think for a minute they give any thoughts to whether viewers can percieve the numbers involved.

[jake-the-peg]

The DNA figures are particularly scary - people seem to have gotten it into their heads that they're infaliable mostly because of that sort of reporting.

Whether you believe that OJ Simpson was innocent or guilty the one thing that came out of that case was the samples had been so badly managed that the DNA evidence would have indicated that Mother Thereasa was a positive match!

[stevie_c2it]

I get the feeling the Government is planning on shifting the blame for the impending power shortages (and increases in price) on the consumers for being ignorant and sceptical of nuclear power, hence the recent �energy for dummies� type news coverage. It�s a neat way for them to thereby avoid there own inability (and incompetence) in tackling a critical and unpopular (i.e. not a vote winning) issue sooner. Particularly as they have been well aware of the UK�s predicted energy shortfall timescales for about 4 to 5 years to my knowledge.

Bear in mind if the decision were to be taken today to build a new reactor, it would still be about 15 years before it could be commissioned and operational, the rising energy demands will see shortages in less than 10.

P.S I always thought Mother Theresa was shifty looking

[dannydingbat]

I was asked once to define the difference between a million and a billion by estimating the number of seconds each takes.

If you start counting the seconds from midnight on New Years Eve in 2005, when would be counting your millionth second? The answer is "11th January 2006". ie. 11 days. The next question was, "When will you be counting your billionth second?" The answer was "early in the year 2035". The man in the street will never understand this perspective thing.

[ronniemonda9]

I suppose technically those figures you cite aren't technically statistics as such...