Who knew bankers care so little about numbers?
Matt Bramanti discovers the latest problem on the Chronicle letters page.
Today, the newspaper printed a letter that asserted:
More than 226,000 children and 104,000 adults are raped every year in Texas, and most of those rape victims are younger than 18. Texas ranks 17th in the nation of forced rapes per 100,000 people — and those are only the ones that are reported! Rape is the most dramatically underreported crime.
Statistics also show that 30 percent of rape victims contemplate suicide while 13 percent actually follow through with their suicides.
Bramanti does a little fact-checking, and discovers the following:
According to the Texas Department of Public Safety, there were 8,541 rapes in Texas in 2002, not 330,000. That same year, according to the Texas Department of Health, there were 2,304 suicides, a far cry from the 42,900 that the writer suggests.
Perhaps if Bramanti had more experience in the banking business, he would not question why a letter made it into print despite being in error by about 321,500 rapes per year.
Posted by Kevin Whited @ 04/12/05 09:49 PM | Print | Comments (0)
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