This Focused Performance Weblog started life as a "business management blog" containing links and commentary related primarily to organizational effectiveness with a "Theory of Constraints" perspective, but is in the process of evolving towards primary content on interactive and mobile marketing. Think of it as about Focusing marketing messages for enhanced Performance. If you are on an archive page, current postings are found here.
Friday, July 06, 2007
Scrutiny of Statistics -- More "scrutiny".
A recent Wired/AP News article on Live Earth targeting China for greenhouse gases falls prey to the use of a number in one dimensions - total amount of emissions. It points out that China surpassed the US as largest source of emissions in 2006 with 6.2 billion metric tons of CO2 vs 5.8 from the US.
However, if the same numbers were given one more dimension and given a per capita perspective, we 300,000,000 in the US would be shown to be putting out about four times as much as our 1,300,000,000 Chinese brethren.
(And Seth Godin makes an "other side of the same coin" point in his post about "times a million math" yesterday. It's not worth it for me to give up my 98 Corvette - average 22 mpg - to go to a 4-banger or hybrid to save a few hundred dollars a year, but..."multiply that by a million.")
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