Ah, the Big Dig
Another $12 million for ceiling repairs? Hey, it’s only money.
“A spokesman for Bechtel/Parsons Brinckerhoff said the company stands behind its work.”
Of course they do! They just don’t want to stand under it.
Archive for August, 2006
Paul Thurrott exaggerates while bemoaning exaggeration
Paul Thurrott’s post on Mac OS X Leopard says things like “It’s too bad they [Apple] feel the need to exaggerate so much”.
He also says that he thinks that “virtually none” of the five Mac OS X releases since 2001 have been “major updates”. Presumably “virtually none” means only one, since we’re only considering five options here, and 40% seems a bit high for “virtually none”. Which one? Well, I’d have to guess 10.0, since except for the Public Beta that was the first version that was available and was therefore the biggest difference from Mac OS 9.
He then goes on to say “(Unless you count the cost. At $129 for each version, that’s about $750 on Mac OS X upgrades since 2001. That kind of puts the cost of Windows in perspective.)”
Except for a minor detail: 10.1 (Puma) was a free upgrade, so the cost now drops to a maximum of $645 (including the cost of Leopard, since his number makes no sense without doing so); that also only applies if you count buying 10.0 among “Mac OS X upgrades” rather than an initial acquisition cost. Admittedly, that’s still a chunk of change, though it’s only an issue if you had bought a G3 or older G4 and are still using it. Anything later came with at least 10.0, saving you another $129. How many Windows users are still using 2001-vintage machines?
“More than any other company I cover regularly, Apple plays light and loose with facts.” Hey, Paul, what do you call overestimating the cost of keeping up with Mac OS X by 20% (counting the purchase price of 10.0 as a cost) or more? (Perhaps 20% is “virtually none” for price errors in Paul’s mind?)
John Allen Paulos on the mean and the median
In an ABC news commentary, he points out something that is easily mathematically demonstrable[1], but isn’t necessarily noticed by the general public: the difference between the mean and the median.
The Republican spin machine has been carefully misusing the mean to say that the economy is improving, because (using 2004’s numbers) mean income is up; however, the median is down. The increase in incomes at the high end brought the mean up, but that’s only because the richest 1% had their incomes grow by almost 17%.
Even within that small group, there’s a lot of inequality. Half of the increase in income going to the top 1% of households went to the top 0.1%….
This is why the Republicans will only raise the minimum wage if they can cut the estate tax.
[1] You live in a town of 10 people. Last year: eight of you had incomes of $20K, one made $10K, and the tenth person wound up with $90K. The mean income was $26K, but the median was $20K.
This year: the $10K person lost his job and made $5K at a part-time job, six of the eight lost hours at their jobs and made $15K each, two folks managed to keep their salaries where they were at $20K, and Thurston Gateston IV over there made $150K. Mean (per capita) income? $28.5K! Hey, that’s a huge increase, over 42% higher than last year! Ignore the fact that the median dropped from $20K to $15K, and the economy looks great. (If you’re Thurston, it is; his income increased by 67%.)
