Hang around the courts for a while, as many journalists do, and you begin to notice some odd patterns. Consider these snippets from a google search of reports on drugs convictions, for example: “16.43 grammes of cocaine valued at €1150″ …
Tag Archive: statistics
Dec
07
Numbers game
It’s been bothering me for a while, but until tonight I never bothered to do any research on it. Here’s Brian Lenihan’s version of it, as paraphrased by The Journal earlier today: “The Finance Minister said Ireland’s taxation system was …
Nov
18
Are speed camera zones about safety or revenue?
I spent Tuesday at Hacks & Hackers Hack. Organised by Scraperwiki, and sponsored by the Guardian Open Platform, NUJ Dublin Freelance Branch and Innovation Dublin, HH&H was a one day exercise uniting Hacks (journalists) and Hackers (computer coders) to extract …
Oct
12
Counting heads
CountMeOut, a website which allows people to formally defect from the Catholic Church, had suspended its website. The reason given is that the Catholic church has changed the rules, so it is no longer possible to leave. According to CountMeOut, …
Aug
19
Junk Watch
On the final day of my holiday in Donegal, I passed by a health food store. In the window was a handwritten notice offering “herbal swine flu remedies”. Then today, the Mayo News used their twitter account to promote the …
Apr
06
Doling Out The Blame
Dole minister Mary Hanafin is trumpeting the results of social welfare fraud investigations. In short, just over one in ten claims investigated were ‘suspended’ or ‘under continuing investigation.’ We are not told how many inquiries are continuing, and how many …