Saturday, November 21, 2009

slashdot taking a lesson from Fox News

It irks me to see clearly biased journalism presented as fair articles. Take a look at this slashdot article:

Headline: "Bing Gains 10% Marketshare"

Wow, you might think, Bing gained a delta of 10% market share? That's quite a lot!

The article reveals that Bing gained market share for a final total of 10%. That is very misleading. If I say "Tom gains 150 pounds", what would you intrepret that to mean? By this usage, it would mean he gained a few pounds to reach a total of 150.

Here's another example from the slashdot blurb:

That's a gain of two large points in five months.

Oh, these are "large" percentage points? That must be a lot more impressive than two "small" percentage points. What about the five months -- are they large or small?

Ridiculous.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

given that bing was launched only few months ago.. it indeed gained 10% marketshare (up from 0%)..

Wei said...

Like


People still read slashdot?!

Anonymous said...

Bing is my hero.

Anonymous said...

Gaining 10% m/s is a common term that you misunderstood. Since unlike weight there is a finite amount, it makes more sense. But then again, I have no good way of logically explaining it...

Unknown said...

Niniane......most journalists are good at making people believe whatever they want.....even if it means mis-representing the facts to suit their purpose.

Some people make an entire living out of doing such reports on well known companies (microsoft, google, yahoo...)

Reminds me of Kara swisher, who entirely lives off of leaked memos & childish bickerings.

Shame on them.

Adrian said...

Good Word, and I like your usage of 'delta'.