The Dartmouth Observer

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Tuesday, August 27, 2002
 
Spell Check


Brent Kesler wrote in his post on the statistics on female genital mutilation:


The statistic comes from the Sisterhood is Global Isntitute. If 6000 girls are genitally mutilated everyday, then in a 365-day year, that comes out to 2,190,000 per year, a lot more than 200,000. This has an error of nearly 1,000%. I must ask: 1) Is the Sisterhood is Global Institute in the habit of producing bad statistics? or 2) Do they merely pass on bad statistics without bothering to check facts? or 3) Is this a simple typo?


Was it really necessary to list options one and two when the "error of nearly 1000%" almost certainly resulted from a typo? If you look to the bottom of the page, the source for the statistics is the United Nations Human Development Report. One has to doubt that the U.N. would provide statistics with such basic mathematical errors. And after all, typos do happen to the best of us: take Brent's misspelling of the Sister is Global Isntitute [sic]. Let's try to not let typos in web content sidetrack a serious debate.