Saturday, September 30, 2006

Indian Express? This is common sense calling...

So I opened IE today and was shocked by this headline:

Urban unemployment at 45 pc [percent], says survey

Nah, it couldn't be, I thought; sure, there are lots of beggars, and lots of people idling around, but unemployment THAT high? It just seemed wrong.

And it was. Because the person who wrote the headline is, without a doubt, an innumerate moron.

Although the lead holds "...the latest National Sample Survey on employment and unemployment in India has revealed that the unemployment rate in urban India was as high as 45 while that in rural India was 17," the next paragraph explains, "the unemployment rate [is] the number of persons unemployed per 1,000 persons in the labor force".

What's 45/1,000, again?

2 comments:

venitha said...

That pesky division...

K. Sundaram said...

Hi mam..this happens several times here too. Irresponsible, careless work. Or else it must be done purposefully to create sensationalism.