Tuesday, October 09, 2007

Times Maths

'Did you know', said Peter, 'that 74,000 deer die on the roads of this country every year.'

'That sounds a bit high,' said Mark and I doing some quick maths. 'That's about 200 a day.'

'Said so in the Times,' said Peter.

Peter, very graciously, brought a copy of the Times' article round the next day. The headline is indeed, '74,000 deer die on roads'. Trouble is, this number is calculated by adding the number killed outright (7,000) to the number which die later (10,000).

Maths. It's so hard.

Still too many dead deer though. Drive carefully.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

A work colleague hit a deer in the road at the weekend - it was already dead but he ended up with a very bloody car. The number of dead deer on the roads is actually a sign that they are flourishing. Since the demise of wolves and bears in Britain there are no natural predators, so in some ways cars driven by us humans are helping to keep populations at a sustainable level.