Shocking Statistics

Richard McCabe - Publicis Singapore - reminded me of the story about the traces of cocaine found in British pound notes (99.9% of notes were found to have traces of cocaine according to researchers).

I remembered a similar study done in the States, where the trace level was at 90%.

This is shocking, or is it?

After doing some searching, I found this great article in the New Scientist that makes me more shocked by the study than the results http://bit.ly/7ErkKX.

In this article they state that the first round of testing was done with a total of 30 notes and then the latest round was done with just 234 bank notes.

I'm no statistician but that sounds like a really low number to substantiate such a bold claim.

My father once recommended a great book to me on statistics - I remember the first line in the book to this day "There are three types of lie - lies, damn lies and statistics."

How true...