canspice.org » Mathematics http://www.canspice.org all about a canadian guy living in canada Sun, 05 Feb 2012 14:59:00 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.2.1 More than half of IT staff fall asleep at work… or do they? http://www.canspice.org/2007/09/28/more-than-half-of-it-staff-fall-asleep-at-work-or-do-they/ http://www.canspice.org/2007/09/28/more-than-half-of-it-staff-fall-asleep-at-work-or-do-they/#comments Fri, 28 Sep 2007 21:24:23 +0000 Brad http://www.canspice.org/2007/09/28/more-than-half-of-it-staff-fall-asleep-at-work-or-do-they/ iTnews is running a story about a survey questioning work habits across different professions. It leads off with this paragraph:
Does your job wear you out? You’re not alone. More than half of IT workers say they’ve fallen asleep at work, according to a new online survey.

More than half, that’s pretty high. One might say that that’s more than 50%, and one would be right.

But hold on. Later on in the article they break it down between women and men:

Forty-nine percent of male techies say they’ve fallen asleep at work, while only 35 percent of women admitted doing so.

If you make the (incorrect) assumption that the gender split in IT is 50-50, that would mean that 42% of IT staff have fallen asleep at work, not “more than half” as the story’s lead-in states. Even if IT were made up of 100% men, that would mean that 49% of IT staff have fallen asleep at work, which is still not “more than half”.

At least the title is correct, which means they’ve got it right in two out of three places. Or, “about two-thirds of the time”.

[tags]IT, survey, bad math[/tags]

]]> http://www.canspice.org/2007/09/28/more-than-half-of-it-staff-fall-asleep-at-work-or-do-they/feed/ 2