The New York Times Bloopers


1			Here is an item from Winners & Sinners, the in-house critique of The New York Times: Mean average item. The story spoke of the "average scores" of high school graduates in the scholastic aptitude test, but the table with the story referred to the "mean scores" (Dec. 16) Which was it? The "average" is the sum divided by the number of components (i.e. students), while the "mean" is a figure midway between the highest and the lowest scores. What do you think of the explanation of average and mean? The following paragraphs appeared in a roundup on population control that was printed in The New York Times. Can you see the flaw in the reasoning used by the researcher? At the extreme, militants charge that efforts to persuade black women to use contraceptives or to have abortions are really aimed at achieving black genocide. A recent report by black researcher Dr. William A. Darity of Amherst, Mass., suggests that these sentiments have large support in the black community. In one New England city, Dr. Darity found that 88 percent of the black males under 30 were opposed to abortion. Almost half of them felt that encouragement of the use of birth control methods "is comparable to trying to eliminate (blacks) from society. The lead story on page one of The New York Times reported that the U.S. Senate had approved the lowering of tariffs by a "wide margin, 76 to 24." It continued, "The House of Representatives approved the agreement on Tuesday by an even wider margin, 288 to 146." "According to Unicef, which relies largely on Iraqi-provided statistics, the infant mortality rate has nearly doubled in the last six years—from 61 per thousand in 1991 to 117 per thousand today." Nearly 93 percent of the 41 botánicas sold mercury capsules. The headline read: Tower in Times Square, Billboards and All, Earns 400% Profit The story said investors paid $27.5 million and sold it for $110 million, nearly four times as much.

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