Courtesy of Irish uber-blogger and technology journalist Damien Mulley come two excellent examples of poor quality information getting loose.
The first concerns an article published in the Irish Examiner Newspaper. They published a story this week which puported to show that Irish employers were losing millions of euro due to staff members using Social Networking sites like Bebo or Facebook. Mr Mulley found no fewer than five errors in the article, ranging from the fact that the survey they were referencing was a UK survey, and 50% of the respondents were interviewed in one location (which wasn’t in Ireland) to basic errors in mathematics in working out the cost to the Irish economy. As Damien helpfully points out (when he fixed his own factual errors due to miscalculations), that for the Irish Examiner’s figures to make any sense the average salary in Ireland would need to be over €120k a year.
…take it from me… it’s not.
As Damien’s site is a blog there are some interesting comments which correct his calculations and provide alternate ways of calculating the costs to the Irish economy of Social Networking. None of them reach the same conclusions as the Irish Examiner.