Today, the BBC report that media agency Zentih Otpimedia have forecast that media revenues could fall by 6.9%. Whilst that is bad news, I was even more struck by the accuracy of the prediction. The way the article is written it would appear that there is a good chance of a 6.9% fall, but not much risk of a 7% fall.
The article also reported that TV’s share of advertising would increase to 38.1%, but that this would be a fall in absolute terms of 5.5%.
Strip the accuracy away and it all seems very plausible. For example, ad revenues might fall by 5% to 10%, TV’s share of the total could increase, but this still might result in TV revenues in absolute terms.
As part of my ongoing project, looking at presentations, I am struck by how rarely decimal places are of value, and that it is even less common for them to help the reader make intuitive sense of the message. Even when the decimal places are accurate, they are usually useless, but when they represent spurious accuracy they are positively harmful.
Comments