There were three men traveling together on
a trip and stopped for the night at a roadside motel. They each wanted their own room so the desk
clerk made the assignments and charged them $10 each for the night for a total
of $30. After the men had paid their
charges, they went to get settled in their rooms. The desk clerk realized that on that
particular night the motel was having a special on the rates and he had
overcharged the men for their rooms.
Calling the bellhop, he gave him 5
one-dollar bills and told him to return the money to the men as an
overcharge. As the bellhop was going to
the rooms, he was trying to calculate how he was going to return the money to
the three men when he had 5 one-dollar bills.
As he got to the rooms, he explained to each man that the desk clerk had
forgotten about the special rate for the night and they had been
overcharged. He gave each man $1 and
kept the other two for himself.
Let’s look at the math: Each man had paid $10, but he was given a $1
refund. So, his net payment was $9. If we take $9 times the 3 men, we get
$27. We add the $2 the bellhop kept and
we get $29. What happened to the other
dollar?
You can play that one out in your mind for
a while. But it goes to show that
figures don’t lie, but liars’ figure!
The secret to the correct answer to the problem above is that the men
didn’t pay $9 each! It’s only presented
that way with our sly calculations!
Another consideration about the
reliability of figures is how they are reported to you. Consider this little story.
One year there was a huge international
car race held in Russia. Because of the
current political situation at the time only the United States and Russia
placed entries in the race. As the story is told the United States had no
difficulty in beating the Russian car.
However, the reporting of that event was
very interesting. Both a United States
major newspaper and the Russian national paper reported on the event. Both papers report the facts of the event;
however, the manner in which the details were reported made a huge difference
in the impression that people got!
The United States paper reported as
follows: “The United States vehicle entry in the international race held in
Russia concluded with the US car in first place. The Russian vehicle place last.”
The same race in the Russian paper was reported as follows: “After the big international race held in Russia, the Russian vehicle came in 2nd place, while the American car was next to last!”
You can see that at times EVERYONE
can be reporting the FACTS, but they can be putting their own slant on
the material and giving a completely different implied understanding.
Why do we do these types of things? Because it is our human nature to want to
make ourselves look better or if that is not possible, to make our competition
look worse! It all boils down to the
fact that we’re only human!
No comments:
Post a Comment