Totally Obvious Statistics, Gotta Love 'Em!

Maybe you know of the urban legend Office Memo from Human Resources which reads "Stop taking fake Sick Days to extend your weekends. We found that 40% of all Sick Days are taken on Fridays and Mondays."  If you don't get the humor, know that in a standard 5-day work week, each day represents 20% of the week. So any two days of the week would represent 40%, not just Fridays and Mondays. I'm really sad that I had to explain that, but then it's well-known that I'll do anything for readers.

Anyway, it happens in real life too. A recent article in the Bucharest Herald proclaimed "Office sex: Women get involved in love affairs with bosses, men with employees."

Ummm... Duhhh?

Okay, making the narrow-minded, unfair, chauvinistic (yep, welcome to my blog!) but likely all-too-realistic assumption that the majority of the affairs in question are standard 1 male + 1 female, let's analyze:

Women tend to have affairs with bosses, assumed (sexually, not professionally) to be men. Men tend to have affairs with employees, assumed (sexually, not professionally) to be women. Therefore, this statement says "Employees have affairs with bosses, but hold onto your hats, bosses have affairs with employees!"

Now, this time, say it with me.  "Duhhh...!"  Both sides of that statement may well describe the same couple!

This article bothers me for two reasons. First, because someone's actually getting paid to print this circular tripe. Well, no, it's because someone got paid to research this circular tripe. No, truth be told it's because I lost nine seconds from my life which I'll never get back, by reading this circular tripe. Well, whatever, it all falls under the first reason, which pales in comparison to the second, more important reason this article bothers me: I'm self-employed! :-(