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Thursday, July 13, 2006
32 billion people
The population of our sorry little planet is around 6 billion, but the Times of India thinks there are more than five times that number of people here. In this editorial, it says, "The tournament generated a record audience of 32 billion people, according to FIFA figures."
The only explanation for this strange figure is that an average of 500 million people watched each of the 64 games in the World Cup, and if you tot them up, you get the "32 billion" figure. But it's still a ridiculous way of saying it, because there aren't "32 billion people."
Hmm. I wonder what they do with their readership figures.
(Link via email from Tony, who finds more errors here.)
Update: Nishit Desai emails to point out that these are figures released by FIFA themselves, as this article indicates. The piece takes care to indicate, of course, that these are cumulative figures.
Meanwhile, Dhoomketu points me to a comment on a post of his where a blogger named corporate whore writes that "all viewership/impressions are duplicated figures. For ex: HLL ads are watched by 150 billion people in India alone." Hmm.
Also, reader Reena Mathews points me to a post by Tantrik-Porter from more than a month ago pointing to another instance of the ToI making the same mistake. What to say now?
The only explanation for this strange figure is that an average of 500 million people watched each of the 64 games in the World Cup, and if you tot them up, you get the "32 billion" figure. But it's still a ridiculous way of saying it, because there aren't "32 billion people."
Hmm. I wonder what they do with their readership figures.
(Link via email from Tony, who finds more errors here.)
Update: Nishit Desai emails to point out that these are figures released by FIFA themselves, as this article indicates. The piece takes care to indicate, of course, that these are cumulative figures.
Meanwhile, Dhoomketu points me to a comment on a post of his where a blogger named corporate whore writes that "all viewership/impressions are duplicated figures. For ex: HLL ads are watched by 150 billion people in India alone." Hmm.
Also, reader Reena Mathews points me to a post by Tantrik-Porter from more than a month ago pointing to another instance of the ToI making the same mistake. What to say now?
