Vital statistics revealed

 

I love statisticians. They have a certain way of looking at life and jumping at all sorts of conclusions. I remember a statistician friend of mine visiting our home and within minutes he was explaining what percentage of doors in houses open outwards and inwards, the average number of windows per house, and the size of gardens in relation to the size of the house.

He told me, "Did you know that 50% of people in Britain, that's almost half," he said, "do not care much for statistics!"

I counted myself with the other half.

When I worked in London I had to go to a statisticians' conference. It was for business and we discussed important things like inflation, deflation, and all sorts of sleep-inducing subjects. As we got in the conference centre we were given a fact-sheet detailing how many of the people there were male and female. The percentage of us which came from the finance sector as opposed to construction, manufacture, import/export, from the North or South, from the private sector or working for other industries and so on. It was illuminating if you put it on a bonfire. It's a pity they did not tell us what percentage of women there were blonde, and the name and telephone number of that pretty young lady sitting a few seats away from me.

What is it with statisticians always quoting figures on TV and radio which are of no real importance and can be disputed by another statistician anyway?

Did you know, for instance, that in the UK 13% of babies are conceived in IKEA beds? A figure I cannot believe since those shops are usually well-lit anyway.

Did you also know for example that 9 out of 5 people cannot do fractions?

Statisticians have discovered there's a direct relationship between the number of heartbeats a mouse has in a lifetime and its its size and weight. They then did the same with an elephant and found the relationship/ratio between the number of heartbeats and the size of the elephant to be the same as that of a mouse.

A mouse being small and fast-running has a very fast heart beat. He therefore uses his allotted number of heartbeats quickly and dies in a matter of a few months. The elephant on the other hand has a slower heartbeat per minute and lives much longer. The faster we use our heartbeats the shorter our life would be.

That's why it is good to be overweight and sit in front of a TV with a large pizza and a beer rather than waste our life in doing exercises.

 

And another important statistics: 70% of visitors to this Blog are new one's who have never been here before. That's good news, but also thanks to all you loyal readers who keep visiting me. Did you know if you all invited new people we'd have more people visiting here? Thanx.