Another fly in my statistical soup

While I'm on one about misleading statistics let me congratulate yell.com on a job well done. Your mailer landed on my desk today. Once I'd figured out where the copy was I saw that the average new business enquiries for businesses in our category of Yellow Pages is over 85 per month. Now we all know that over 85 means 86 but hey! 85 new biz enquiries is bloody good. So I read on. It seems the average of 85 was based on a survey of 3,000 UK adults per month (I'm starting to think we need a bigger ad in Yellow Pages)...over a ten year period. Excuse me? Why do I care how many new business enquiries people were getting in 1996? In a week that has been filled with shysters and snake oil salesmen, Yell you are a shining example of why Bill Hicks told anyone who works in marketing to go kill themselves.

It's a small world (or so some people think)

Above: A Post Office Telecoms researcher giving it large

Post Office Telecoms have found the perfect voice. This may come as a surprise if you consider yourself to have a good voice and weren't approached to be part of their rigorous study but they decided that they only needed to listen to 50 voices to find perfection. Since they were searching for the perfect male and female voices they hopefully listened to 25 of each though being the Post Office they probably told the researchers that 1 woman and 49 men or any combination between 1 of one and 49 of the other would suffice.

Given the world's population is around 6.7 billion, even allowing for mutes and babies, a sample of 50 doesn't quite seem enough to qualify your findings as the perfect voice.

Arse Cherry

Oh, the immature-schoolboy humour that can be derived from rudely shaped fruit...



I shall keep it on my desk until it goes green and furry.