Are the numbers plausible?
As the General Motors examples illustrate, you can often detect dubious numbers simply because they don’t seem plausible. Sometimes, you can check an implausible number against data in reliable sources such as the annual Statistical Abstract of the United States. Sometimes, as the next example illustrates, you can do a calculation to show that a number isn’t realistic.
EXAMPLE 7 Now that’s relief!
Hurricane Katrina struck the Gulf Coast in August 2005 and caused massive destruction. In September 2005, Senators Mary Landrieu (Democrat) and David Vitter (Republican) of Louisiana introduced the Hurricane Katrina Disaster Relief and Economic Recovery Act in Congress. This bill sought a total of $250 billion in federal funds to provide long-term relief and assistance to the people of New Orleans and the Gulf Coast. Not all of this was to be spent on New Orleans alone, and the money was not meant to be distributed directly to residents affected by the hurricane. However, at the time, several people noticed that if you were one of the 484,674 residents of New Orleans, $250 billion in federal funds was the equivalent of
191
This would mean that a family of four would receive about $2,063,240!
NOW IT’S YOUR TURN
Question 9.1
9.1 The abundant melon field. The very respectable journal Science, in an article on insects that attack plants, mentioned a California field that produces 750,000 melons per acre. Is this plausible? You may want to use the fact that an acre covers 43,560 square feet.