A letter about numbers · Tuesdays
One figure a week,
and why it is wrong.
Six hundred words every Tuesday on a number somebody put in a headline, and what it looks like once you find the denominator.
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Latest issue · No. 214
The productivity number nobody divided.
18 October 2027 · 6 minute read
A report said output per worker rose 4.1 percent. It did. The number of workers also fell by 7 percent, and the two facts are the same fact.
When a ratio moves you have to ask which half moved. Output per worker is output divided by workers, and a fall in the denominator lifts the ratio without anyone producing more of anything.
This is not a trick. It is simply what division does. But it becomes a trick the moment the ratio is quoted on its own, because the sentence “we became more productive” and the sentence “there are fewer of us” feel very different and here they are identical.
The test I use is dull and works: before repeating a ratio, say both halves out loud. If either half moved more than the ratio did, the ratio is the least interesting thing on the page.
Next week: why the median wage rose in a year when most people earned less.
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Eleven years in data teams, four of them explaining to boards why the chart they liked was the wrong chart. Writes this on Monday nights.
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