CaldwellYSR
Member
This is a bit of a rant but it comes to a point. The main question is last so if you don't feel like reading the rest of it feel free to skip below ![Wink ;) ;)](data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP///yH5BAEAAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAIBRAA7)
I'm aware that this country was bought and paid for a long time ago by big companies. So even though I understand how this pet peeve of mine is allowed to happen, I'm still curious about the legality of it all. So I'm wasting my life and my health away on the couch watching ESPN when a commercial comes on about high school dropouts. (Rather funny commercial since Lebron James is the one talking and he skipped college for the NBA but anyways...) He says 7000 kids drop out of school every school day. Now I have a VERY hard time believing that is true, but for the sake of this argument I will let that slide. He continues to say "that is 26 students per second".
What?!
Now LeBron didn't go to college but it doesn't take really difficult arithmetic to figure out that 7000 students a day does NOT in any way result in 26 students per second. If you take a 24 hr day you have:
Well 0.081 students per second doesn't come anywhere near 26 per second! "Well a school day isn't 24 hours long and they clearly said 7000 per school day!" is one response I got when I brought this up around the people I was watching tv with. So let's check THAT math then.
Yep.... 0.28 per second. That's alot closer to 26 per second but still NOWHERE NEAR IT!!! It's blatant misinformation just to make their cause more powerful and their message more clear.
Now...
I picked a bad commercial to pick on because they have a good message. We need to help these kids so we don't have so many drop outs because there are alot of dropouts and I bet legitimate statistics show that a good number of those dropouts don't lead very successful lives after they drop out. That being said this one stuck out to me because of how blatant it is and how easy it is to disprove. So...
TL;DR see question below
Is it really LEGAL for companies to get away with completely false statistics? It seems to me that it should not be.
I'm aware that this country was bought and paid for a long time ago by big companies. So even though I understand how this pet peeve of mine is allowed to happen, I'm still curious about the legality of it all. So I'm wasting my life and my health away on the couch watching ESPN when a commercial comes on about high school dropouts. (Rather funny commercial since Lebron James is the one talking and he skipped college for the NBA but anyways...) He says 7000 kids drop out of school every school day. Now I have a VERY hard time believing that is true, but for the sake of this argument I will let that slide. He continues to say "that is 26 students per second".
What?!
Now LeBron didn't go to college but it doesn't take really difficult arithmetic to figure out that 7000 students a day does NOT in any way result in 26 students per second. If you take a 24 hr day you have:
7000 per day / 24 hrs in a day = 291.66... per hr
291.66... / 60 min in an hour = 4.8611... per min
4.8611... / 60 sec in a min = 0.08101852 per second.
Well 0.081 students per second doesn't come anywhere near 26 per second! "Well a school day isn't 24 hours long and they clearly said 7000 per school day!" is one response I got when I brought this up around the people I was watching tv with. So let's check THAT math then.
7000 per day / 7 hrs in a school day = 1000 per hr
1000 per hour / 60 min in an hour = 16.666... per minute (uh oh)
16.666... per min / 60 seconds in a min = 0.2777... per second.
Yep.... 0.28 per second. That's alot closer to 26 per second but still NOWHERE NEAR IT!!! It's blatant misinformation just to make their cause more powerful and their message more clear.
Now...
I picked a bad commercial to pick on because they have a good message. We need to help these kids so we don't have so many drop outs because there are alot of dropouts and I bet legitimate statistics show that a good number of those dropouts don't lead very successful lives after they drop out. That being said this one stuck out to me because of how blatant it is and how easy it is to disprove. So...
TL;DR see question below
Is it really LEGAL for companies to get away with completely false statistics? It seems to me that it should not be.
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