Does Anyone Have A Feeling For Numbers Anymore?
The Boston Globe, in its usual blundering math-challenged media way, blithely published an editorial the other day that included this hilarious "fact"
Since June, Israel has limited its exports to Gaza to nine basic
materials. Out of 9,000 commodities (including foodstuffs) that were
entering Gaza before the siege began two years ago, only 20 commodities
have been permitted entry since. Although Gaza daily requires 680,000
tons of flour to feed its population, Israel had cut this to 90 tons
per day by November 2007, a reduction of 99 percent. Not surprisingly,
there has been a sharp increase in the prices of foodstuffs.
OK, the Gaza has over a million residents, but do these 1.4 million people really require 1.36 million pounds of flour a day?? I find that hard to believe, and amazing that no editor even asked the question, much less checked.
Update: Did a search. Found this. The Palestinian ministry puts consumption around 350 tons per day. That makes a bit more sense. Congratulations on missing the number by over 3 orders of magnitude. You can bet they are doing a lot of quality fact-checking on those global warming estimates too.
Update 2: I agree with the commenter that the number they should have used was something like 680,000 pounds rather than tons. I would have written it off as a typo, transposing tons for pounds, but the math was based on it being tons, not pounds, so it is not just a typo issue.
