MORE STATISTICAL BS

by Thermocaster, The Meaningful Collateral

It's become an unpleasant rite of spring. No, not the NCAA Tournament, which is a very happy occurrence that unites millions of fans across the country. Instead, I refer to the annual release of the "lost productivity" statistics for those viewing the tournament, talking about the tournament, filling out brackets, etc.

This article from the Detroit Free Press contains the most recent numbers, which are released every year by some "placement firm" named Challenger, Gray, and Christmas, Inc (Hell of a firm name, guys...hope you're proud of that). According to these schmucks, this year's edition of March Madness could cost employers as much as $1.7 billion due to lost productivity.

Now, I'm not a math guy by any means, but even I can see that the numbers used in this are pure, unfiltered crap. According to the study (and I use that term very loosely), every 10 minutes of time spent by workers on basketball equates to a loss of $109 million for America's companies. Carried out to its logical conclusion, the study is expecting that people will spend 156 minutes on basketball at work during the tournament --- and that somehow, all of those 156 minutes would otherwise be carried over into actual, productive work.

Over at FanIQ, 100% Injury Rate had a similarly negative reaction to this study coming out yet again. As he notes, the numbers just seem to arbitrarily jump upwards every year. Allow me to artfully steal a key part of his post on this topic, dealing with this firm's projected numbers from the last five studies:

2004 $765.7
2005 $889.6
2006 $3,800
2007 $1,200
2008 $1,700

So what happened between 2006 and 2007? Perhaps they realized that claiming a productivity loss of $3.8 BILLION was just a tad overboard?

I look at this situation the same way I look at studies which claim that your children are going to be abducted by perverts and molesters the moment they hop onto the Internet. The fact that the numbers are bullshit isn't even the main problem --- the insane (and inane) scare-tactic focus of the media is the problem. It's very reminiscent of all those fake stories from the early 90's which claimed that domestic violence occurs at its highest level on Super Bowl Sunday (check out Snopes for a proper knock-down of that theory). How on earth do you, as a news editor, sit there and justify running a story like this AS FACT, when in reality there's no way to measure such a thing?

Well, you do it because your business is to deal in stereotypes and reactionary events, since these are the things which drive readership. It reminds me of one of my favorite quotes, from late in his tenure at Indiana, when someone was asking him about unnamed sources. Knight replied "What's an unnamed source? I mean, if I were to come in here and say that someone out in the hallway, who doesn't wish to be named, has informed me that 78% of the men in this room are having extramarital affairs with sheep, is that an unnamed source?"

Is there lost productivity during March Madness? Yeah, probably there is. But there's also lost productivity when you go to the bathroom.

Still, as big of a piece of crap as this study is, the real blame lies at the feet of news editors across the country, who continue to post this crap like it's real news.