{"id":18483,"date":"2009-04-22T10:00:01","date_gmt":"2009-04-22T10:00:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.msdn.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/2009\/04\/22\/if-you-cant-find-the-statistics-you-want-then-just-make-them-up\/"},"modified":"2009-04-22T10:00:01","modified_gmt":"2009-04-22T10:00:01","slug":"if-you-cant-find-the-statistics-you-want-then-just-make-them-up","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/20090422-01\/?p=18483","title":{"rendered":"If you can’t find the statistics you want, then just make them up"},"content":{"rendered":"

Yesterday, the Wall Street Journal<\/i> reported on America’s Newest Profession: Bloggers for Hire<\/a> and included this handy little chart:<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n
Comparing Job Numbers in America<\/b><\/caption>\n
Lawyers<\/td>\n555,770<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Bloggers<\/strong><\/td>\n452,000<\/strong><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Computer Programmers<\/td>\n394,710<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
CEOs<\/td>\n299,160<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Firefighters<\/td>\n289,710<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Source: Bureau of Labor Statistics<\/a><\/i><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n

I found this number hard to believe, so I followed the Source<\/i> link to the information from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. I found that, yup, in a May 2007 survey, the Bureau of Labor Statistics estimated that there were indeed 555,770 lawyers, 394,710 computer programmers, 299,160 chief executives, and 289,710 fire fighters in the United States. <\/p>\n

Bloggers? Didn’t even make the list. The number 452,000 appears nowhere in the Bureau of Labor Statistics report. <\/p>\n

If you can’t find the statistics you want, then just make them up (but claim somebody else provided them). <\/p>\n

(The comments on the article suggest that the number 452,000 was derived from a Technorati report that there were 20 million blogs, of which only 4.7 million have been active in the past four months. The number 20 million was then combined with a Technorati survey of active bloggers in which 2% of them self-reported blogging as their primary source of income.) <\/p>\n

Pre-emptive snarky comment<\/b>: “Microsoft’s current advertising campaign uses made-up numbers.” <\/p>\n

Bonus statistics<\/b>: The claim that “It takes about 100,000 unique visitors<\/a> a month to generate an income of $75,000 a year” is a total misrepresentation of the Technorati report. Technorati said that the average annual income among people with 100,000 or more<\/u> unique monthly visitors is $75,000. That’s like seeing that the average salary for a professional baseball player is $3.1 million<\/a> and concluding that once you reach the big leagues, you’ll be pulling down $3.1 million, when in fact—as the new guy—you’ll most likely be making the baseball minimum wage of $390,000. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Yesterday, the Wall Street Journal reported on America’s Newest Profession: Bloggers for Hire and included this handy little chart: Comparing Job Numbers in America Lawyers 555,770 Bloggers 452,000 Computer Programmers 394,710 CEOs 299,160 Firefighters 289,710 Source: Bureau of Labor Statistics I found this number hard to believe, so I followed the Source link to the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1069,"featured_media":111744,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[103],"class_list":["post-18483","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-oldnewthing","tag-non-computer"],"acf":[],"blog_post_summary":"

Yesterday, the Wall Street Journal reported on America’s Newest Profession: Bloggers for Hire and included this handy little chart: Comparing Job Numbers in America Lawyers 555,770 Bloggers 452,000 Computer Programmers 394,710 CEOs 299,160 Firefighters 289,710 Source: Bureau of Labor Statistics I found this number hard to believe, so I followed the Source link to the […]<\/p>\n","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18483","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1069"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18483"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18483\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/111744"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18483"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18483"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18483"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}