Sun 4 Nov 2007
5:33 pm
Barbie was right, math class is tough!
Numbers seem to be tricky things, but a few simple rules can get most people through their everyday lives. Addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division are all you really need, thankfully, because if I had to use calculus ever again I'd probably just quit civilization entirely. Even if someone finds the basics mathematical functions troublesome, calculators are cheap enough that they're given away free with cereal and fast food. All of which means that there's really no reason for Gamespot to report the PS3 gaining on the Wii in Japan.
I'll admit that it wasn't until Squall pointed it out on the Got Next message boards that I noticed, but sure enough, the headline is completely wrong. Here's the numbers to prove it.
The numbers from two weeks ago-
PS3: 17,139
Wii: 24,932
Or, the PS3 sold 68.74% of the Wii's total
Last week's numbers-
PS3: 18,785
Wii: 27,502
Meaning that the PS3 sold 68.30% of the Wii's total, or 0.44% less than the previous week. While it's true that a headline saying "PS3 Registers Barely Noticeable Dip vs Wii in Japan" doesn't have the same ring, it would come with the advantage of not being 100% wrong.
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November 4th, 2007 at 5:49 pm
Very nicely written.
On another interesting note, it seems that some Gamespot readers are trying to justify the headline by saying that technically the PS3 has gained on the Wii overall, as they are only being outsold 2:1 now (as opposed to 6:1 a year ago).
The two problems are:
1) This justification wasn’t mentioned in the body of the article. The author was erroneously substantiating the headline based solely on the numbers therein.
2) If you’re being outsold 6:1, do you have anywhere to go but up? That would be like Sports Illustrated publishing an article with the headline “Raiders Gaining on Patriots.” It’s pretty easy to “gain” on anybody when you only had two wins last year.
So is it a pro-Sony conspiracy or just shoddy journalism? Everyone will have to draw their own conclusions here.
November 4th, 2007 at 10:06 pm
James is a good writer. Believe.
What’s with the headline fubar though?
November 5th, 2007 at 10:33 pm
Wish I knew what was up with the headline tag. I tried editing it a couple times to reflect only the Barbie line, but it won’t listen to me.
And yeah, I definitely believe it was bad math causing the headline. I’d have to come up with a reason Gamespot wanted to give the PS3 some a fake bit if positive publicity easily disproven by simple division in order to give credit to the conspiracy theory, and that’s an awful lot of work for no payoff.