Complete and Utter Zebu

MPs GIVEN STAGGERINGLY SIMPLISTIC GUIDE TO UNDERSTANDING STATISTICS

According to exam results, Britons get cleverer with each passing year. That may not be true, however, of our politicians. For, at our expense, a guide has just been produced for them called Statistical Literacy: How To Understand And Calculate Percentages.

It poses staggeringly advanced questions like: “What is the % button on a calculator?”. Apparently, “Calculators have a shortcut ‘%’ button. Use this for example to work out 40% of 50, by pressing 50 * 40 ‘%’ to get 20″.

“What are percentages?”, it asks of our lawmakers, explaining that: “Percentages are essentially a way of writing a fraction with 100 on the bottom. For example: 20% is the same as 20/100, 30% is the same as 30/100, 110% is the same as 110/100.” If only that last example stops them offering to give “110% support” in future.

“Percentages are a way of expressing what one number is as a proportion of another – for example, 200 is 20 per cent of 1,000.”

Other gems include: “Percentages are useful because they allow us to compare groups of different sizes. For example, if we want to know how smoking varies between countries, we use percentages. We could compare Belgium, where 20% of all adults smoke, with Greece, where 40% of all adults smoke. This is far more useful than a comparison between the total number of people in Belgium and Greece who smoke.”

Perhaps they should have made it more practical still with questions like: “There are 646 MPs in the House of Commons. What percentage have claimed more on their expenses than permitted?”

Much as we would like to think this is a tongue-in-cheek jape at the expense of MPs (sic), it apears not. If the Commons authorities really think MPs need such a Noddy guide, which at first sight appears aimed at primary schoolchildren, no wonder the country is in such a mess.

Let us hope that somebody makes Harriet Harman read it. Despite repeated tellings-off by the Office for National Statistics, still insists on misrepresenting the pay differential between men and women.

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