Big Numbers in the News

[Bill (Smithville NJ)]

There’s a BBC program called “More or Less” that “explains - and sometimes debunks - the numbers and statistics used in political debate, the news and everyday life”. It’s a fascinating program.

Today’s news contains a number that started me thinking about whether this could really be correct. General Motors CEO Mary Barra today announced the results of the report done by Anton Valukas. She said that Valukas reviewed more than 41 million GM documents.

Since 41 million is a fairly large number, it got me to thinking about what this would imply. Using my trusty HP calculator (to keep this HP related), I calculated the following:

Assume one second to review one document. That would mean about 11,388 hours to review the entire set. Let’s also assume that he had a team of 50 people doing this. Then each person would average 227 hours or 28 days at 8 hours per day.

Of course, I am ignoring whether a “document” is one page or a 100 pages. Also ignoring the time it takes to make any notes while reviewing the document. And of course one second is a ridiculous time to review a document.

I would say that it’s impossible to review 41 million documents. GM may have provided that many documents but they definitely were not reviewed in their entirety.

I think “More or Less” would have a field day with this number.

It always amazes me that The Press will just print these numbers and never analyze them. I’ve had long email discussions with many reporters about this. Most reporters just come back with that they don’t have time to analyze numbers. But I have a few reporters that actually followed up, did some additional research and then reply back to me with the results. Those are the real reporters and not just copy editors.

Bill