Tags
numeracy
WSJ Slips Up on a Union Story
And its misses tilt toward the anti-labor side
By Ryan Chittum Feb 24, 2011 at 09:45 PM
The Wall Street Journal's page-one story yesteday on the union battle in Wisconsin erred on a few points, all of... More
A Big Mac miss by The Huffington Post
Poor reporting on a “study” by a Kansas undergrad
By Ryan Chittum Jul 31, 2013 at 11:00 AM
The Huffington Post reports that McDonald's could double its workers wages by raising the price of a Big Mac by... More
A Zombie Lie Is Born
CNBC’s false welfare-state story spreads far and wide
By Ryan Chittum Mar 11, 2011 at 12:21 PM
Two days ago I fisked a false report from CNBC that said more than a third of all wages and... More
An Atlantic Ghost Story
Housing crash porn with no “there” there
By Ryan Chittum Mar 31, 2011 at 03:05 PM
The Atlantic runs a slideshow post by 24/7 Wall St.'s Douglas A. McIntyre with the click-me headline "The New American... More
Audit Notes: blame the borrowers, Walmart cashiers, newspaper prices
The Democratic Party platform on mortgage issues
By Ryan Chittum Sep 5, 2012 at 11:00 AM
Henry Blodget somehow thinks that "everyone has spent the last five years trying to blame the housing crash on every... More
Audit Notes: digital ads, margins of error, freehadists
French publishing’s online revenues make the Americans look good
By Ryan Chittum Nov 6, 2012 at 06:50 AM
This New York Times story is nice on the coming attempt in Europe to get Google to pay content providers... More
CNBC Misleads on “Welfare State” Dominance
Bad math overstates government payouts
By Ryan Chittum Mar 9, 2011 at 10:20 AM
(UPDATE: See my follow-up post here: A Zombie Lie Is Born: CNBC’s false welfare-state story spreads far and wide.) There... More
Journalists Need to Do the Math
Numbers still make many watchdogs whimper
By Justin D. Martin Dec 6, 2010 at 11:29 AM
CAIRO—I tell my students that in addition to English they should learn two more languages: an in-demand foreign tongue, and... More
Michael Kinsley Takes Issue with an Audit Criticism
By Ryan Chittum Dec 6, 2010 at 04:42 PM
Michael Kinsley writes to say I missed the point of his column asking "Are we poorer than we used to... More
Misleading and incomplete coverage of Apple’s ‘record’ value (CORRECTED)
Microsoft’s 1999 market cap still, by far, bigger
By Ryan Chittum Aug 20, 2012 at 02:06 PM
The big market news today is about Apple's gargantuan market capitalization reaching a new, stunning high: Bloomberg News: Apple Becomes... More
New math
Keeping numbers simpler
By Merrill Perlman Jun 10, 2013 at 02:28 PM
Last week, we talked about how the words used to express numbers can help (or confuse) readers. Now, let's talk... More
No, it’s not another housing bubble
Hysteria in pockets of the press over a long-awaited recovery
By Ryan Chittum May 30, 2013 at 11:00 AM
The top story in all the major papers on Wednesday was news that home prices jumped 11 percent in the... More
Small bites
Making big numbers more understandable
By Merrill Perlman Jun 17, 2013 at 03:00 PM
The wildfires are at it again: One near Colorado Springs was really big. How big? CNN said it was about... More
SmartMoney is confused on wages, inflation
When prices matter and when they don’t
By Ryan Chittum Aug 17, 2012 at 06:50 AM
This SmartMoney post on "Why You're Not Getting a Raise" doesn't make sense. The lede: Didn’t get a raise this... More
The Worst Personal-Finance Video Ever
By Felix Salmon Mar 15, 2012 at 01:45 AM
Like many people, I’m fascinated by lottery tickets. In many ways they’re the purest speculative investment in the world: a... More
The WSJ editorial page and Paul Ryan’s Medicare plan
Bogus numbers and rewritten history
By Ryan Chittum Aug 16, 2012 at 11:06 AM
The Wall Street Journal editorial board's Joseph Rago makes a whopper of an error in a column Tuesday extolling Paul... More
U.S. Oil Is Limited and Fungible, the HuffPost Reports
By Ryan Chittum May 9, 2011 at 12:40 PM
The Huffington Post's Michael McAuliff has a good piece of reporting on the potential impact of a bill the House... More
WaPo dings the ‘give-it-away-free approach’
A mess of a story on Facebook
By Ryan Chittum Aug 24, 2012 at 06:50 AM
There's all kinds of irony about the Washington Post slapping a company for a "give-it-away-free approach" that has hurt share... More
What are the odds?
Dealing with percentages
By Merrill Perlman Nov 5, 2012 at 01:00 PM
Take this quiz: If one candidate has 46 percent of the likely voters, and the other has 48 percent, what’s... More
Woman’s work - The twisted reality of an Italian freelancer in Syria
Sourcing Trayvon Martin ‘photos’ from stormfront - Not a good idea, Business Insider
Elizabeth Warren, the antidote to CNBC - The senator schools the talking heads on bank regulation
Art Laffer + PR blitz = press failure - The media types up the retail lobby’s propaganda
Reuters’s global warming about-face - A survey shows the newswire ran 50 percent fewer stories on climate change after hiring a “skeptic”
Barack Obama: ‘those old times aren’t coming back’
“It used to be there were local newspapers everywhere. If you wanted to be a journalist, you could really make a good living working for your hometown paper”
The Guardian’s editor opens up on Reddit
Alan Rusbridger, editor of The Guardian, answered questions in an Ask Me Anything
The (almost) lost speech of Justice Anthony Kennedy
How his insightful remarks about the Constitution inadvertently make the case for a Supreme Court “media pool”
Fox News sues TVEyes for copyright infringement
Says subscription service sells access to its content without permission nor compensation
CJR's Guide to Online News Startups
ACEsTooHigh.com – Reporting on the science, education, and policy surrounding childhood trauma
Who Owns What
The Business of Digital Journalism
A report from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism
Questions and exercises for journalism students.
