What's your favourite 'dubious' statistic??

If you don’t blink when you sneeze your eyes fall out.

Eyes are useless if you carry on with ‘that’…

DrP

Employment is rising. But only if you look at it as individual people in work, rather than as full time equivalents. Once you include underemployment, the level of employment is actually falling.

bikebouy – Member

Giving 110%

Totally possible, depends on how you frame it. Similiar to, say, engine ratings where it’s common to run them at above 100%.

Santa Cruz bikes all cost 7k

3% of singletrackers have peed in someone’s shoes.
14% of all baby robins die due to wheel based debates.

Everyone in the world could fit on the Isle of Wight (although you may struggle to book a B&B)

100% of the people who have used the word lightening on this thread meant lightning.

[excluding this post, obvs]

obvs, I was just lightning the load… 🙂

DrP

Giving 110%

slight hi-jack (and genuine question) is that a statistic?

It’s a figure of speech, research has proven it’s used by 89% of Apprentice hopefuls.

That women earn 72 cents for every dollar a man earns.

On average, you eat 8 spiders a year whilst asleep

http://www.snopes.com/science/stats/spiders.asp

There are more people alive today than have ever lived on the planet since time began .

continuity – Member

That women earn 72 cents for every dollar a man earns. Shouldn’t that be ‘spends’? 🙂

Anything related to politics.

Might as well blindfold a chimp and get him to chuck a dart at a board to get the answer.

Eight out of tens cats is (are?) a TV show.

Ninety-nine percent of gargoyles look like Bob Todd.

WorldClassAccident – Member
If you buy your lottery ticket on Monday you are more likely to die before the draw than win it

I am never going to buy a lottery ticket again. The kill people!!

Then kill people? 😯 😆

The ones that make me cross are ‘range’ statistics where they quote the wrong end of the range in order to sound better. Like, “SALE: save up to 40%!” Sounds good, right, must be a massive sale? But it’s meaningless, it’s saying that the most you’ll ever save is 40%, they could have one product at 40% off and everything else in the sale at a 1% reduction. “Save at least this much” would be far more helpful (but doesn’t look as good on shop window displays).

Everyone in the world could fit on the Isle of Wight (although you may struggle to book a B&B)

Seems plausible. The ones at the bottom might have a headache though.

^^^
You wanna shop in Next!
They DO say “At least 50% off sale items” (hence the queues at 5am…..)

DrP

“At least 50% off sale items”

Does that mean that they cut at least one leg off each pair of trousers??

In which case, is the sale aimed at people with an average number of legs??

Not dubious but its a fact and it has just irked me.

When I park in a supermarket car park with 9 spaces around me the next three cars will park in spaces adjacent to me.

Not sure of the provenance but I’m sure there is one going around recently that says 90% of all the photographs ever take in history happened in the last year

(due to the huge numbers of phones with cameras).

“Women earn 27% less than men”

Alrighty then…

Ninety-nine percent of gargoyles look like Bob Todd.

*Like*

“The average length is 6 inches”

I can spot a lie when I see one.

You can get you recommended intake of vitamin C from just 11 pints of larger.

1 in 4 people are mentally ill. Check three friends, if they’re ok you’re it.

onehundredthidiot – Member
Not dubious but its a fact and it has just irked me.

When I park in a supermarket car park with 9 spaces around me the next three cars will park in spaces adjacent to me

9 spaces? Don’t you mean 8? And in reality aren’t there just 5?

Heard from a politician on the radio, in a shocked something must be done voice, “50% of British people are below average intelligence”

There are more people alive today than have ever lived on the planet since time began .

Err… That doesn’t even make sense.

I’d heard it that 10% of the people to have ever lived are alive today. Even that seems rather extreme!

40% of sick days are on a Monday or a Friday. Highly suspicious.

1 in 5 people in the world are Chinese. in my family there are 5 of us. I’m not sure if its Colin or Zhang We. I think its Colin. (maybe not verbatim but you get the idea)

We gave 110%. No you didn’t f-ktard!

Also, x increases your chance of cancer by y %. Whilst this could be true, anyone who understands stats realises that a 30% increase really isn’t much when the original chance is minute!

Eddiebaby, yes 5 adjacent to me then one on either side of them, two per row, two rows, so 9 in total.

One parked so close they had to do car door limbo to get out. Don’t mind just don’t get why you’d park hard against someone in a half full car park when there are closer spaces to the shop.

More people are killed by vending machines than sharks.

I’d heard it that 10% of the people to have ever lived are alive today. Even that seems rather extreme!

The Population Reference Bureau reckon it’s 7 billion alive today.

107 billion ever lived.

IPCC

40% of sick days are on a Monday or a Friday. Highly suspicious.

Love that one 🙂

http://dilbert.com/strip/1996-04-17

jon1973 – Member
Everyone in the world could fit on the Isle of Wight

I heard this one about 30 years ago, people have got a lot fatter since then.

And there are 3 billion more of them too!