How 136 People Became 7 Million Illegal File-Sharers 313
Barence writes "The British government's official figures on the level of illegal file sharing in the UK come from questionable research commissioned by the music industry. The Radio 4 show named More or Less examined the government's claim that 7m people in Britain are engaged in illegal file sharing. The 7m figure actually came from a report written about music industry losses for Forrester subsidiary Jupiter Research. The report was privately commissioned by none other than the UK's music trade body, the BPI. The 7m figure had been rounded up from an actual figure of 6.7m, gleaned from a 2008 survey of 1,176 net-connected households, 11.6% of which admitted to having used file-sharing software — in other words, only 136 people. That 11.6% was adjusted upwards to 16.3% 'to reflect the assumption that fewer people admit to file sharing than actually do it.' The 6.7m figure was then calculated based on an estimated number of internet users that disagreed with the government's own estimate. The wholly unsubstantiated 7m figure was then released as an official statistic."
mathematics (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Story meaning? (Score:2, Funny)
In this case, 3% is >1.17 million people.
Re:Meaningless admission (Score:5, Funny)
I asked the British government, but unfortunately they told me you don't actually exist. Sorry.
Re:the true "what the fuck" (Score:3, Funny)
As a solipsist I'd say everyone does it.
Re:Scoundrel Statistics (Score:3, Funny)
My next concern would be precision. Using data with three or four significant digits (136, 1176) to make conclusions to seven significant digits (11.56463%) is silly, but that doesn't seem to have happened here. The only number in all of this that is fishy is the 16.3% number. To get three significant digits they'd have to know the number of lying households to that precision. If they had another study that determined this number they might very well have a number to that precision, but I'm assuming they just guessed.
It wasn't that precise. The original number was 17.0% and the article poster just converted it from metric percentages so Americans wouldn't get confused.
Re:Story meaning? (Score:3, Funny)
Excellent Summery
Statistics are hard, and so is gramer.