Just watched this program I'd recorded tonight, the one called "Size Matters". No, the title is not a mistake. It's about (supposedly) surprising statistics, like how the US went from historically the tallest nation, to only the 9th tallest. Early on they showed a nice graph on how our height raised, more or less steadily, until 1950, and then stayed constant, and stated other nations then caught up and surpassed us. But a bit later in the show, they showed the same graph, and detailed how our height DROPPED at the time of the civil war, and dropped even more 15 years after the war (bad nutrition and such), before it increased. If you compare those two graphs, of the same thing - our average height over the years - they are greatly different. And their "comparison" of the American and British heights, using 4 different soldiers for each, measured inaccurately and with their hats on, was laughable.
No, I love stats. So I was a bit disappointed. But then they came to Sumo wrestlers and potatoes, and gave these two wonderful quotes:
"Idaho produces over 13 BILLION pounds of potatoes every year." okay
"That's enough for every man, woman and child in the US to eat 53 potatoes EVERY DAY ALL YEAR LONG."
Okay, I'm fairly good with figures, but you don't have to be to know that THAT CAN'T BE RIGHT! I certainly didn't eat my 53 potatoes today, and don't intend to tomorrow. And I doubt we are exporting THAT many McDonald's happy meals!
So, a quick calculation gives us 13,000,000,000 pounds of potatoes, divided by 313,607,310 (right now, from the US PopClock web site), gives me 41.45 pounds of potatoes PER YEAR. Okay, considering everything, that may be possible. AND, it's possible that 41.45 pounds of potatoes comes out to about 53 potatoes. But that is PER YEAR, not EVERY DAY ALL YEAR LONG!
If these goofs can't calculate, or have enough sense to realize how wrong their figures are, then that pretty much makes this a completely worthless program.
I thought the History Channel would do better.
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Actually, he's a nice likeable guy, but I have to wonder how he remembers to tie his own shoes sometimes.
