Stats

When not focusing on the important and shocking fact that it's snowing outside, the news has recently been harping on about someone failing to blow up a plane. Hysteria has resulted and people are actually cancelling flights over this - despite it being 20 times more likely you'll be struck by lightning, than be a victim of a terrorist plane-bombing (per flight).

Another comparison drawn by that link (go on, click, there's a really pretty picture) is that there's one attack per 11.5 billion miles - which is the same distance as two round trips to Neptune. Which pretty much rules out any hope of gaining public confidence up for interstellar space travel. If you didn't like that joke, you'll hate this one:

"The odds of being on a plane with a bomb on it are 1/10,000,000. The odds of being on a plane with two bombs on it are 1/1,000,000,000. So I always take a bomb on a plane with me"

Accountants Can't Count

Every day, on my way into work, I see a giant poster on the tube wall advertising the Institute of Charted Accountants, which reads thus:

"Over 84% of FTSE 100 companies have an ACA on their board."

- also available on their site. Now, whilst this may well be true, it seems an odd way to phrase things. There are, by definition, one hundred FTSE100 companies. As such, it surely shouldn't be too hard to come out with an exact percentage.

I was tempted to believe that maybe this was just some clever marketer trying to make it seem like there were possible many more than just 85 FTSE100 companies with an ACA on their board. But, frankly, having seen the rest of the advert (a picture of a fairly shoddy leather chair), I don't really believe they hired a marketing consultant. I'm more inclined to believe it's just a rounding error..