The media's failure to understand mathematics. Specifically not understanding how averages work.
Any particular example?
House prices. In our area prices are pretty much static, but there are far fewer sales at the bottom of the market. If you take out the bottom 15-20% the average goes up even though prices aren't rising. Journalists don't understand this, so headlines say prices are rising across the board. Hurrah! Drinks all round!
Ah. So the price of the homes which are sold is indeed rising, but the homes which are sold this year are not comparable to the homes which were sold last year.
Yes, the average is rising but it is the average of a different range.
On an unrelated note: people who try to reserve chairs in a very busy cafeteria. I had to get shouty with an English coach who wanted to save a table for his imaginary friends, who still hadn't turned up when we left 20 minutes later.
They do that here, it results in incredibly inefficient use of table space.
Overheard on a 'plane back from Eire on Saturday "We have to go through immigration because it is deemed to be another country". Wrong on both counts, we didn't have to go through immigration because of reciprocal agreements and it is another country, we had a war about that a while back.
Confused - what are the countries (or what is the country) involved? I'm not sure who is deemed, or who is doing the alleged deeming here.
Someone a flight from Dublin to Edinburgh on Saturday, saying "they" presumably the UK government, had deemed Eire to be a separate country.
