All the muck that's fit to rake

[aishira]

So I've taken to reading the newspapers people bring to work during lunch. Mostly it's just out of boredom because everyone else is reading the news too. Here are a couple of things I came across yesterday, one which surprised me, one which annoyed me, and one which pissed me off:

A&W Restaurant receives dubious "Salt Lick" award. Apparently they

Comments

[princeartemis]

To the second story, I'm probably the only journalist in Nova Scotia that knows what SPSS is let alone how to use it. They google and wikipedia most of their statistics, or they ask unemployment and job bank people who will usually pull a number out of their asses

[tharon]

RE: Minimum Wage

It kills me, because this stuff is so easy to verify at Statistics Canada. I seriously found a better estimate in less than 5 min. I have pretty good faith in their results, since it's a criminal offense NOT to fill out their surveys :p

By my calculations, there are about 48575 people making minimum wage or less in Nova Scotia.

Population of NS (2007): 934,147
http://www.statcan.ca/english/studies/75-001/comm/9-2.htm

% minimum wage (or less) workers (2005): 5.2%
http://www.statcan.ca/english/studies/75-001/comm/fact-9.htm

Seems a bit low to me, but then, Cape Breton is probably one of the poorest places in Nova Scotia.

[strangestquiet]

Why the hell WOULDN'T someone go to StatsCan first? O_o; They do the census. THEY'RE the ones who have the numbers (and where everybody else gets theirs!) Gah.

[aishira]

See, you guys know what I'm talking about! *hugs to friends who took statistical analysis classes* ^__^

Almost 50,000 sounds like a MUCH more reasonable estimate, although I'd still be willing to bet it's more than that since high school students and the like don't really do those surveys. I don't think I've ever done one. >.>