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Media Science

Newsy Numbers 332

Posted by CmdrTaco from the math-is-a-wonderful-thing dept.
EriDay writes "The Wall Street Journal has a new feature called The Numbers Guy about "the way numbers and statistics are used - and abused - in the news, business and politics". The first installment lets us know that somewhere between 0 and 1 Billion (or more) people will be killed by Asian bird flu."
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Newsy Numbers More

Newsy Numbers

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  • Statistical Lies... (Score:5, Informative)

    by Allen Zadr ( 767458 ) * <Allen.ZadrNO@SPAMgmail.com> on Thursday January 13, 2005 @03:01PM (#11351819) Journal

    First published in 1954: How to Lie With Statistics [amazon.com]

    Good book, recommended reading, if you like the above article.

    • Re:Statistical Lies... (Score:2, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      John Allen Palos has a generally well reguarded series of books on Innumeracy.

    • Re:Statistical Lies... (Score:5, Informative)

      by tgrigsby ( 164308 ) on Thursday January 13, 2005 @03:05PM (#11351873) Homepage Journal
      Or if you want the Reader's Digest version, there's a quick and easy explanation of how to use critical thinking when you hear statistics here: http://www.wsu.edu:8080/~taflinge/evistats.html [wsu.edu]
      • "up to" includes zero.
        • Much like those "home equity line of credit" mailers that come to my house, looking like a check payable to me, saying "You are automatically qualified for up to $$56,234.89 OR MORE!! " I hate those things, but more than that I hate the idea that the scheme works well enough that they keep doing it.

          "There's a sucker born every minute." -- PT Barnum

          "The thing that scares the shit out of me is when I realize that half of all people are of below average intelligence." -- Dennis Leary

      • Bad statistics jokes (Score:5, Funny)

        by fbform ( 723771 ) on Thursday January 13, 2005 @04:45PM (#11352821)

        A statistician discovered that the probability of a bomb being on board a given aircraft was alarmingly high. But he realized that the probability of two bombs being on board the same aircraft was reassuringly low.

        So these days, whenever he flies, he carries a bomb with him.

        ---- ____ ----

        A university surveyed its graduate students, and found that the male students averaged 1.8 children each, while he female students averaged 1.4 children each. Therefore men have more kids than women.

    • Re:Statistical Lies... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by hackstraw ( 262471 ) * on Thursday January 13, 2005 @03:17PM (#11352065)
      I've heard of the book, but have not actually read it personally. I remember reading something in 4th grade or thereabouts that talked about how advertisers used numbers to make their product seem better with things like 3 out of 4 doctors surveyed, etc.

      Also, there is a popular quote that goes "Lies, damn lies, and statistics".

      Similar to the article, there is a strange number game that was done a while back when the SARS "epidemic" hit the world. A total of about 850 people died from the thing, yet annually 10,000 or so people die from influenza. SARS is an epidemic, influenza not.

      However, people have heard of influenza and not SARS, so I guess it makes for better headlines.
      • The difference is that influenza doesn't have a 20% mortality rate [guardian.co.uk] in the general population. Influenza rarely kills healthy adults. If SARS were not contained, it could have easily killed a lot more than 10,000. Imagine a respiratory infection that spreads as easily as a cold that kills 1 in 5 of everyone infected. I think we had good reason to be nervous at the time.

      • SARS (Score:4, Informative)

        by KMSelf ( 361 ) <karsten@linuxmafia.com> on Thursday January 13, 2005 @09:27PM (#11355634) Homepage

        Why was SARS so significant?

        • Novel disease with (initially) unknown etiology.
        • Novel disease agent (SARS virus) of unknown origin.
        • Extremely high mortality rate (as noted by other responses). The ultimate mortality rate appears to be around 9%, though localized rates in excess of 20% exist, possibly due to variance in the infectious agent (more below). Moreover, as I was following stats at the time, the mortality rate was grossly underreported for several weeks as the epidemic unfolded. I wrote several nastygrams myself to The Economist which was quoting a much lower (3-8% IIRC) mortality. Mortality varied greatly with age, from Wikepedia [wikipedia.org]: "below 1% for people aged 24 or younger, 6% for those 25 to 44, 15% in those 45 to 64 and more than 50% for those over 65." The article has a wealth of information.
        • Extremely high transmission rate. SARS was passed between victims based on very casual contact, including apparently nothing more than sharing a confined room for a brief period of time.
        • Poor response to therapy. Once ill, a victim's prognosis was largely independent of treatment. Viruses are difficult to treat in any event, and the few nominally useful antiviral treatments which do exist were largely ineffectual.
        • Rapid mutation and/or wide variance among viral strains. Based on my after-the-fact recollection of SARS mortality rates. China had among the highest mortality, rates were far lower elsewhere. This may have been due to differences in treatment or more strains of the virus present in China (where SARS originated) than elsewhere.
        • Suppression of initial information. China's government and health authorities initially responded to the SARS outbreak by supressing information. This confounded responses be making unavailable useful information and generating rumors and speculation.
        • High morbidity and mortality among healthcare workers. Among the hardest hit communities were the doctors, nurses, and researchers initially responding to SARS. Among the victims were several of those who first identified, treated, and isolated the disease. In a broader outbreak, healthcare workers would likely have suffered significantly. A friend's wife, staff at one of the few US hospitals to encounter SARS (Belvue, NYC) was very concerned.

        So you've got a new, disease with unknown agent, few treatments, high mortality, and a large impact on healthcare infrastructure. Not a good sign.

        The extent to which cases and deaths due to SARS were minimized is not an indication that the disease was overblown, but that the response to it was highly effective. Remember that there was a massive quarantine effort made. Again from Wikipedia:

        Attempts were made to control further SARS infection through the use of quarantine. Over 1200 were under quarantine in Hong Kong, while in Singapore and Taiwan, 977 and 1147 were quarantined respectively. Canada also put thousands of people under quarantine. [
        12 [yahoo.com]] In Singapore, schools were closed for 10 days and in Hong Kong they are closed until April 21 to contain the spread of SARS.

        SARS was a very close call, and a big wakeup alert.

    • First published in 1954: How to Lie With Statistics

      It's still a lot easier to lie without statistics...

    • Oh, and here're some more:

      http://my.execpc.com/4A/B7/helberg/pitfalls/ [execpc.com]
      http://www.stat.berkeley.edu/users/stark/SticiGui/ Text/ch16.htm [berkeley.edu]

      With information like this available about the misuse of statistics, I find the crap that comes out of the current Presidential administration amusing. Things like jiggling the numbers when reporting the number of wounded and dead from Iraq, employment numbers, Social Security liquidity, that sort of thing. Understanding how statistics are used as propoganda tools ma
    • Excellent book. I also recommend "Mathematics Made Difficult" by Carl Linderholm (may be out of print).

  • My personal favorite (Score:4, Funny)

    by TildeMan ( 472701 ) <<gsivek> <at> <mit.edu>> on Thursday January 13, 2005 @03:02PM (#11351833) Homepage
    During one of the 2004 presidential debates: "We increased federal wetlands by 3 million!" -- GWB

    I'm still not really sure what that means.
  • This thread provides and excellent opportunity to bash Bush, America, Corporations and Fox News!

    I am very excited about the forth coming insults, unfounded claims, personal attacks and general hyper polarization this thread promises!

    Go Slashdot!

  • So... (Score:5, Funny)

    by FireballX301 ( 766274 ) on Thursday January 13, 2005 @03:03PM (#11351845) Journal
    The first installment lets us know that somewhere between 0 and 1 Billion (or more)

    Excellent, it's nice to know that a negative number of people won't die.
    • But perhaps, statistically speaking, a negative number of people *could* die. How? Statistically speaking, a birth would be the inverse of a death, eh?

      What if one or more people get sick with a particular pathogen and end up having to go to the hospital. In the end, the doctors save the day, and all the ill folks leave feeling much better, thank you. Now, suppose a few of the formerly hospitalized fellows (or females) fell in love and made little ones with special someones (to be sterotypical, nurses)

    • Re:So... (Score:4, Interesting)

      by fred fleenblat ( 463628 ) on Thursday January 13, 2005 @03:39PM (#11352371) Homepage
      However, he does not rule out fractional numbers of dead people.

      When I'm in the mood to tweak, I'll bring up the idea that deaths should be scaled by life expectancy. An extreme example would be that maybe the death of a 90 year-old guy with cancer should only count about 1% as much as the death of a healthy college kid.

      This is at first a bit horrifying, but it changes the perception of health risk a bit. A car accident can strike at any time no matter your health or life-expectancy, but the flu is far harsher on the very young and the very old. Heart attacks quite rare for the under-30 crowd, become very common in the 50's and 60's and start tapering off since people who are susceptible have already had them. Various other ailments have other relationships to life-expectancy, both for susceptibility and for impact.

      The logical conclusion I always get to is that we should focus a lot more health resources on the very young, i.e. pre-natal and neo-natal care, free vaccinations, healthy childhood diets and exercise, lifelong sunscreen habits, semi-intentional exposure to a variety of colds and flus in the teens and 20's, and moderation of alcohol and fatty foods after that.

      It's all common sense stuff and would pay off 100:1 compared to after-the-event treatments for things like heart attacks and cancer.
  • and of those, a further 13% are made up, he's going to have no shortage of material;-)

  • Did you know... (Score:5, Funny)

    by se2schul ( 667721 ) on Thursday January 13, 2005 @03:04PM (#11351854)
    ...83% off all statistics quoted are made up on the spot!

  • Pi (Score:5, Interesting)

    by savagedome ( 742194 ) on Thursday January 13, 2005 @03:04PM (#11351856)
    Also, in his diary, the following excerpt was found:

    11:15, restate my assumptions: 1. Mathematics is the language of nature. 2. Everything around us can be represented and understood through numbers. 3. If you graph these numbers, patterns emerge. Therefore: There are patterns everywhere in nature.

  • aarch... panic ! (Score:4, Funny)

    by selderrr ( 523988 ) on Thursday January 13, 2005 @03:04PM (#11351866) Journal
    ...somewhere between 0 and 1 Billion (or more) people...

    Is that zero , or zero billion ?

    [...head explodes...]

  • Funny Statistic (Score:5, Funny)

    by Lord Kano ( 13027 ) on Thursday January 13, 2005 @03:05PM (#11351870) Homepage Journal
    1/3 of all auto accidents involve people who test positive for marijuana use.

    This means that 2/3 of all auto accidents are cause by people who are not high.

    We sober people are KILLING each other while the stoners are not.

    LK

    • Re:Funny Statistic (Score:5, Funny)

      by Shadow Wrought ( 586631 ) <<moc.liamg> <ta> <thguorw.wodahs>> on Thursday January 13, 2005 @03:16PM (#11352036) Homepage Journal
      I remember a statistic in College (way to long ago to remember the cite) about the disparity between males and females when it comes to causing car accidents. Males were far more more likely to be responsible as the cause of an accident- unless alcohol or drugs were not involved. Then women were far more likely to be the cause;-)
    • 100% are caused by humans. That's why I let my dog drive me everywhere.
    • " 1/3 of all auto accidents involve people who test positive for marijuana use."

      Since marijuana users continue to test positive for @ 30 days after use, what this really means is that 1/3 of all auto accidents involve people who smoke pot, but may or may not have been high during the accident.

    • Reminds me of an anti-speeding promotion run by the Government of British Columbia a few years ago. They distributed flyers at malls and meetings that contained, among other things, a pie chart with the various causes of accidents broken down by percentage and accordingly sized pie wedge with a large bolded heading, "Speed Kills" or somesuch. The "speeding" wedge was colored red and greatly blown up for dramatic effect, while such other causes as "following too closely" and "unsafe lane changes" remained no

    • even worse... (Score:3, Informative)

      by siskbc ( 598067 )
      1/3 of all auto accidents involve people who test positive for marijuana use.

      I recall that statistic, and it's not quite right (though your joke was appreciated nonetheless). That stat, I believe, was that 1/3 of people tested for drugs after a traffic accident tested positive for MJ. That's a bit different.

      So, really, what that was testing was the ability of cops to tell what drivers were stoned. And, in this case, there were 2x as many false positives as actual positives.

      That stat, brought to us by

  • Great (Score:2)

    by Rolan ( 20257 ) *
    Hopefully this will bring more visibility to the issue. It's always bugged me the way the media, governments, etc. misrepresent numbers so often. Too bad it wasn't around in time for the elections; there couldn't be more abuse of numbers than there.

    • Re:Great (Score:2, Insightful)

      by laupsavid ( 466567 )
      With normal peoples' allergy to thinking about anything, it doesn't matter much how much effort is put into trying to educate them.

      They still will not think critically enough to protect themselves from being fooled, on top of which they'll continue to believe whatever makes them comfortable at the moment.

      So it'll continue to be more effective for people with an agenda to distort facts and figures, or even simply lie.
    • I remember reading a book about statistics. The author talks about how he had a student come in and give a paper and one of the statistics mentioned was (something along this meaning ) "The number of children that die from guns has doubled every year since 1970". This was given in the late 90's or around 2000. Now, assuming that ONE (1) Child had died in 1970 due to a gun, that would mean that 1,000,000 would have died in 1990. And that by the time this book was published, over 1,000,000,000 each year.

  • Science numbers? What about business numbers? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by fuzzy12345 ( 745891 ) on Thursday January 13, 2005 @03:06PM (#11351892)
    I'd have thought that the natural interests of those reading the WSJ would be in how business/finance people misrepresent with numbers, not business people.

    My favourite is "fastest growing." We're always hearing about something being the "fastest growing" but, unless I know whether this is in percentage terms or absolute numbers, I have to write it off as a useless statement.

  • The Media (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Daxx_61 ( 828017 )
    The 100 million figure was reported widely, including in the New York Times, The Wall Street Journal Online, CNN, Newsweek and the U.K.'s Observer; but without much caution about how arbitrary it is.

    ...Once again showing that the media aren't really that smart. Sources should be check for accuracy in any case, especially where these people are misinforming hundreds of thousands. Maybe this sort of story isn't an issue, but what if something more important to the readership were to be published erroniousl

    • Re:The Media (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Infamous Tim ( 513490 )
      It's the byproduct of news media for monetary gain, which is itself a product of capitalistic societies. The outlets want things that bring in views/readers/listeners, and inflammatory or sensational stories do it every time. Or, said another way, "if it bleeds, it leads." How unfortunate for the readers that we don't get the whole story.
      The funny thing is how much more reliable profit-seeking news outlets are than say state-run news outlets. Who here doesn't remember the side-by-side videos of the Ira
      • "The funny thing is how much more reliable profit-seeking news outlets are than say state-run news outlets."

        Have you ever watched the BBC? Not bad for a state-run outfit.....
    • ...Once again showing that the media aren't really that smart.

      No, not incompetent or dumb. Just looking for sales/headlines.

      FTA:
      "...big numbers get headlines while honest uncertainty usually doesn't."

    • Slashdot ... critical opinion ... Hahahaha!
    • But at least we subject our stories to critical opinion.

      *laughter in the audience*

  • I see plenty of cautions (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 13, 2005 @03:08PM (#11351919)
    The Numbers Guy says, "The 100 million figure was reported widely, including in the New York Times, The Wall Street Journal Online, CNN, Newsweek and the U.K.'s Observer; but without much caution about how arbitrary it is."

    So I looked [google.com] and I couldn't find a single article supporting his claim that it was reported as fact.

    Maybe it's The Numbers Guy who abusing facts.

    • er, click on your own link - the first article has the 100 million figure in it.

      Unless you want to debate the meaning of the word "fact".

      Skippy
      • Unless he's completely blind, I'm pretty certain his point is that those articles cite the "100 million" figure as an estimate, not a fact.

        Although in fairness to the WSJ, the Numbers Guy said "without much caution about how arbitrary it is", not "as a fact".

  • It happens every day (Score:4, Interesting)

    by DavidBrown ( 177261 ) on Thursday January 13, 2005 @03:08PM (#11351928) Journal
    I have read (sorry, cannot cite source) that the claim that 100,000 civilians have been killed in Iraq is based on a statistical survey that says somewhere between 5,000 and 100,000 civilians had been killed.

    • Iraq Body Count [iraqbodycount.net] keeps a detailed record of all news reports regarding civilian deaths in Iraq and attempts to synthesize all of the information from several different sources.

      They currently have the total between 15,289 and 17,503.

    • Re:It happens every day (Score:2, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      The 100,000 deaths from the war in Iraq figure was published in the British medical journal, the Lancet.
      http://www.thelancet.com/search/search.i s a
      (registration required)

      From the article:
      "We estimate that 98000 more deaths than expected (8000-194000) happened after the invasion outside of Falluja and far more if the outlier Falluja cluster is included. The major causes of death before the invasion were myocardial infarction, cerebrovascular accidents, and other chronic disorders whereas after the invasion
    • I have read (sorry, cannot cite source) that the claim that 100,000 civilians have been killed in Iraq is based on a statistical survey that says somewhere between 5,000 and 100,000 civilians had been killed.

      The reaction to the Lancet study was quite interesting; not the back and forth about the validity of the study, but how it changed the way the other major figure, the Iraq Body Count, was viewed. All of a sudden, those who were previously playing down any figures given for civilian deaths, from pundit

  • quote (Score:2, Insightful)

    by sometwo ( 53041 )
    "There are three kinds of lies: lies, damn lies, and statistics." - Mark Twain

    Of course 70% of statistics are indeed made up.
    • In fact, the original author of that quote is Benjamin Disraeli (1804-1881). Just google the quote. It is also documented in Bartletts book of quotes.

      http://www.bartleby.com/66/99/16799.html

    • Re:quote (Score:3, Funny)

      by Peyna ( 14792 )
      Of course 70% of statistics are indeed made up.

      So are 70% of quotations.

  • Similar (Score:3, Funny)

    by kodelab ( 844027 ) on Thursday January 13, 2005 @03:10PM (#11351957) Homepage
    Like Bush winning the 2004 election with 0-60,608,582 votes.

  • How To Lie With Statistics (Score:3, Informative)

    by rumblin'rabbit ( 711865 ) on Thursday January 13, 2005 @03:12PM (#11351977) Journal
    "How To Lie With Statistics" by Darrell Huff, although more than 50 years old, is still a great read. It's astonishing how few of its lessons have been learned even today.

    And I get a kick out of the illustrations by Irving Geis, even though (or maybe because) they are rather dated in style.

  • Hello PR Stunt! (Score:5, Insightful)

    by torinth ( 216077 ) on Thursday January 13, 2005 @03:13PM (#11351994) Homepage
    This column is just an superficial attempt by the WSJ to combat the "news is junk" meme that's been building over the last few years. They're trying to make it look like: "hell, we've got people who write fricking columns about statistical manipulation!" so that you don't think the rest of their paper prints it.

    But odds are that in todays super-competitive least-necessary-change news market the WSJ has done nothing substantial to improve the accuracy of their paper and instead just inserted a column to improve the image.
    • I agree with the parent that a lot of "news is junk" ... but I personally feel the WSJ does a very good job in their writing and is quite accurate ... heads-n-shoulders above others.

      Disclaimer: I've been a 20+ year WSJ subscriber and had some recent dealings with them [wsj.com] plus a bunch of other media [komar.org] and the difference was night-n-day.

    • But odds are that in todays super-competitive least-necessary-change news market the WSJ has done nothing substantial to improve the accuracy of their paper and instead just inserted a column to improve the image.

      I think the WSJ is valuable precisely because it doesn't succumb to the sensationalizing impulse that seems to infect so many media outlets today. Many of its stories are informative, balanced and nuanced. For example, see the series of stories on rising health care costs and who gets hurt by the

    • Re:Hello PR Stunt! (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Qrlx ( 258924 )
      I'll add my voice to the chorus here. WSJ is one of the "fairer" newspapers out there. I don't take this extreme a view, but a friend of mine feels that the WSJ and the Christian Science Monitor are the only American newspapers worth reading. Actually he said English-language papers worth reading, but I can't remember which foreign papers he included. Might have been the FT, not sure.

      Try reading the WSJ someday. Just the little "In The News" grayed-in section on the front page contains more informatio

  • A Mathematician Reads the Newspaper (Score:5, Informative)

    by markh1967 ( 315861 ) on Thursday January 13, 2005 @03:17PM (#11352052)
    The article reminded me of 'A Mathematician Reads the Newspaper' [amazon.com] by John Allen Paulos. A great read for those interested in the mangling of science and numeracy by the media and politicians.

  • A joke from the past (Score:5, Funny)

    by Maimun ( 631984 ) on Thursday January 13, 2005 @03:27PM (#11352188)
    During communism (Bulgaria), we had this joke. An American and a Soviet athlete competed in an official event of importance. The American won. Next day, the newspapers wrote: "The Soviet athlete took the second place, while the American only got the penultimate one". :)

  • A BBC Radio series worth listening to.. (Score:5, Informative)

    by Angostura ( 703910 ) on Thursday January 13, 2005 @03:28PM (#11352196)
    The BBC has an excellent radio series called More Or Less" [bbc.co.uk] that unpicks the numbers and statistics that are bandied about in the news. It is authoritative, interesting and a remarkably good listen (available on demand using Real Audio)
  • There are lies, damn lies, and statistics.

  • But a billion COULD die ... (Score:3, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 13, 2005 @03:38PM (#11352361)
    First rule of government: inconclusive data means no action.

    The article is about H5N1, better known as "bird flu." Some important things to know about avian influenza: in the small number of cases we've seen of it, it has a 75% or higher mortality rate (as opposed to 2.5% for the Spanish Flu pandemic of 1918); it is remarkably difficult to create vaccines for it, because it kills the eggs used to create traditional influenza vaccines; the variants we see are amantadine/rimantadine resistant, limiting antiviral treatment options and suggesting significant exchange of genetic material with human influenza viruses; it is pantropic (capable of infecting tissue across the body) in some animals, and both pneumotropic (as all influenza are) and neurotropic in others; and H5N1 is epidemic in Asia amongst many different waterfowl.

    So, what we know is that if an H5N1 variant emerges that is human-infectuous and easily transmissible, the chances are very, very high that the resultant pandemic would burn through populations like a wildfire. Furthermore, the chances of this happening are greater than either the appearance of or the damages from various high-profile, high-budget "homeland security" scenarios, such as smallpox (unlikely to occur) or a dirty bomb (more panic than damage).

    So, what are the right risk factors? That's hard to say, since it depends on the right mutations being hit. But what we do know is that H5N1 represents at least as dangerous a threat as al-Qaeda.

  • Straight dope (Score:3, Informative)

    by Paul Townend ( 185536 ) on Thursday January 13, 2005 @03:42PM (#11352420) Homepage
    This reminds me of a straight dope question/response:

    For years those sugarless gum commercials have said, "Sugarless gum is recommended by four out of five dentists for their patients who chew gum." What does the fifth dentist recommend? Gum with sugar? --Elizabeth E., Towson, Maryland

    Cecil replies:
    Oh, sure, Elizabeth, why not? It's like tire dealers scattering tacks on the road. Fact is, the fifth dentist usually recommended no gum at all. Not the kind of advice a chewing-gum company wants to play up real big. The Warner-Lambert Company, makers of Trident sugarless gum, commissioned a market research firm to survey dentists in July 1976. The research people came up with a list of 1,200 dentists who were supposed to represent a cross-section of their profession. The dentists were asked what they recommended to their gum-chewing patients--sugared gum, sugarless gum, or no gum at all. Sugarless gum won with 85 percent. Nobody seems to remember exactly how many votes sugared gum got, but I figure there had to be at least one. Cast by the same guy that in a real election always votes for Donald Duck.
  • Kent: Mr. Simpson, how do you respond to the charges that petty vandalism such as graffiti is down eighty percent, while heavy sack-beatings are up a shocking nine hundred percent?
    Homer: Aw, people can come up with statistics to prove anything, Kent. Forty percent of all people know that.
    Kent: I see. Well, what do you say to the accusation that your group has been causing more crimes than it's been preventing?
    Homer: [amused] Oh, Kent, I'd be lying if I said my men weren't committing crimes.
    Kent: [pause]
  • The first installment lets us know that somewhere between 0 and 1 Billion (or more) people will be killed by Asian bird flu.
    Somewhere between 0 and 1 Billion (or more) people will die of heart attacks while reading this article.

  • Here's a classic: about marriages and divorce (Score:3, Interesting)

    by jwd-oh ( 513054 ) on Thursday January 13, 2005 @04:27PM (#11352673)
    The often quoted statistic:
    In the US, 1/2 of all marriages end in divorce.

    The correct statistic:
    In the US, the annual divorce rate is 1/2 the annual wedding rate.

    These are extremely different.

  • somewhere between 0 and 1 Billion (or more)

    Doesn't that pretty much cover most things?

  • "He uses statistics like a drunk uses a lamp post: for support, rather than illumination."

    ;{)

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