Numbers matter
Apr. 24th, 2009 02:51 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
peterbirksGawd, I get back to just into the black for the month, and then hit a single Buy-in deficit at $200 (KK v AA all-in pf against an Australian at 7am, so there's no way I'm going to lay it down). Got back to $40 down on that session but then spunked it away again. Dropped to $100 Buy In and promptly dropped another $300. That adds up to a monkey deficit by noon. Hardly an auspicious start to the weekend.
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There was a great story tucked away yesterday in a release put out by the California Department of Insurance. I don't normally repeat stories that I run in my (professional) publication, but this one merits it.
You may remember a year or so ago I received a press release containing the phrase "114% higher". I checked the document on which the release was based and saw (as I expected) that the actual phrase was "114% of". So I phoned the guy up and said:
"You say here it's 114% higher".
"Yes, that's what the document says"
"Well I've just read it, and it says '114% of'"
"Yes".
"Hmm, ok, so how much is 14% higher, and does that differ from 114% higher?"
"Oh, yes, I see."
Corrected release issued five minutes later.
Now, the thing about stuff like this is that twat-faces say behind the back of their hands, "Pedant, it was obvious what we meant", and no matter how much you scream that this kind of thing is important to get right, it's not that often that real events rather than theoretical or hypothetical ones bear you out.
Step forward AIG, yes, the company that burns money faster than Formula One.
Last November there was a bad forest fire in California, near Los Angeles. Of the 485 mobile homes destroyed in the fire, about 370 were insured by a niche insurer that is a subsidiary of AIG. Said niche insurer put, in its policy wording, (well, I haven't actually seen the policy, but they must have, because they have backed down on the matter and paid the full sums claimed), that in the event of a "total loss", policyholders were entitled to (depending on the policy) an "additional" 110% or 125% cover.
When the fires hit, AIG wrote to policyholders that what was obviously meant was that the insurer would pay an additional 10% or 25%.
Five people complained to California Department of Insurance. Said CDI presumably said to the AIG subsidiary what I would have said, that being, if you meant an additional 10%, then you should have written 10% rather than 110% in the policy wording.
So, a simple misunderstanding of how percentages work, an assumption that these things don't really matter, has cost AIG, wait for it, about $37 million dollars Each destroyed mobile home (all 370 of them) is now covered for an average of $210,000, rather than $110,000.
The next time your boss thinks of employing someone who doesn't know how the English language works (or how percentages work) and doesn't think that it matters that much, just quote that example at them. Indeed, I would have as a questionin any interview. "How much is 200% more? Twice as much or three times as much?" Hell, you give them a 50% chance of being right....
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++++++++++++++
There was a great story tucked away yesterday in a release put out by the California Department of Insurance. I don't normally repeat stories that I run in my (professional) publication, but this one merits it.
You may remember a year or so ago I received a press release containing the phrase "114% higher". I checked the document on which the release was based and saw (as I expected) that the actual phrase was "114% of". So I phoned the guy up and said:
"You say here it's 114% higher".
"Yes, that's what the document says"
"Well I've just read it, and it says '114% of'"
"Yes".
"Hmm, ok, so how much is 14% higher, and does that differ from 114% higher?"
"Oh, yes, I see."
Corrected release issued five minutes later.
Now, the thing about stuff like this is that twat-faces say behind the back of their hands, "Pedant, it was obvious what we meant", and no matter how much you scream that this kind of thing is important to get right, it's not that often that real events rather than theoretical or hypothetical ones bear you out.
Step forward AIG, yes, the company that burns money faster than Formula One.
Last November there was a bad forest fire in California, near Los Angeles. Of the 485 mobile homes destroyed in the fire, about 370 were insured by a niche insurer that is a subsidiary of AIG. Said niche insurer put, in its policy wording, (well, I haven't actually seen the policy, but they must have, because they have backed down on the matter and paid the full sums claimed), that in the event of a "total loss", policyholders were entitled to (depending on the policy) an "additional" 110% or 125% cover.
When the fires hit, AIG wrote to policyholders that what was obviously meant was that the insurer would pay an additional 10% or 25%.
Five people complained to California Department of Insurance. Said CDI presumably said to the AIG subsidiary what I would have said, that being, if you meant an additional 10%, then you should have written 10% rather than 110% in the policy wording.
So, a simple misunderstanding of how percentages work, an assumption that these things don't really matter, has cost AIG, wait for it, about $37 million dollars Each destroyed mobile home (all 370 of them) is now covered for an average of $210,000, rather than $110,000.
The next time your boss thinks of employing someone who doesn't know how the English language works (or how percentages work) and doesn't think that it matters that much, just quote that example at them. Indeed, I would have as a questionin any interview. "How much is 200% more? Twice as much or three times as much?" Hell, you give them a 50% chance of being right....
___________
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Precisely (give or take 100%)
Date: 2009-04-24 07:14 pm (UTC)I find, when I venture into the wild these days, that it is no longer sufficient for ignorant and sloppy ninnies to accuse me of being a pedant. This may be because they dimly perceive that I am proud of being a pedant, and, moreover, would prefer the exclusive company of same. James B. may be surprised to hear this, but it's why I greet his every post with a modicum of suitably restrained joy.
No; now I get my prose quoted back to me in mangled form as "blah blah blah 'pseudo-English' blah blah blah" (to quote one response almost verbatim). This is rather disconcerting. I try to throttle the wilder elements of my vocabulary and phrasing, and I get bupkis. (Which, if I may claim a linguistic first on your blog, is apparently באָבקעס. Not a very attractive font there.)
Anyhoo ... I raise my glass to the worthy recipients of the $35 million, and also to the CDI. Nice to know that a (local) government department is doing its job properly, for once. Actually, given what I saw of Cal State (elected, for some bizarre reason) Insurance Commissioners in the 1990s, little short of astonishing.
Re: Precisely (give or take 100%)
Date: 2009-04-24 07:20 pm (UTC)The last Commissioner, Garamendi, was ok, and Poizner, the current incumbent, seems to be okay as well.
PJ
Re: Precisely (give or take 100%)
Date: 2009-04-24 08:10 pm (UTC)Perhaps even more interesting is the fact that California is the 10th largest economy in the world (CIA Factbook 2007, and no doubt sinking). Given the prominence of things like Insurance in said economy, this means that a man like Quackenbush is actually of abiding interest to a financial hack such as your good self in one of the more obscure -- oops, "niche" -- corners of your industry; yet of practically no interest whatsoever to someone like me, who lived in the damn place between 1994-2000.
Hell, I used to amuse myself by doing impressions of what I fondly thought a Sesame Street character with the same name would sound like. (Not, obviously, with the State Police in the vicinity. They are not, in my experience, Forgiving People. Nor do they have a sense of humour, or watch Sesame Street. It's a bit beyond their intellectual capabilities.)
Interesting to note, therefore, that some pusillanimous jerk whose mals penses might, conceivably, occupy every waking moment of your working life for a fortnight was elected by uninformed and entirely bored people such as myself, who regard him (rarely her) as little more than a hand-shadow puppet.
Well, obviously not elected by me. But you get my drift.
Another interesting thought is that, at some point in the early 1980s, over 50% of drivers in California were uninsured. This was of course on account of technical reasons, such as that they were poor or Mexican or felons or simply too illiterate to fill in the forms ... or sometimes any permutation of the four. I doubt that these people troubled themselves too much with Mobile Home Insurance, or Dread Pirate Roberts Mitigation.
Consequently, over fifty per cent of the state were voting for a potentially thoroughly unqualified bozo to run a State Agency in charge of regulating something with which they had no possible personal connection, but which churned through tens of $billions each year of his term.
Unless, of course, a fully-insured driver happened to crash into them. Or AIG insured their mobile home. Or they were good friends with a freak named Feswick, and their name was Inigo Montoya.
Prepare to die!
sic transit artes democratiae.
Re: Precisely (give or take 100%)
Date: 2009-04-25 08:23 pm (UTC)Bupkis would be בופקיס
And, of course, the 'qametz' under the 'aleph' is completely unnecessary, because, as surely everyone knows, an 'aleph' is used in Yiddish to signify the vowel sound 'o' (as in hot), and only requires a vowel diacritical when signifying the vowel sound 'u' (as in hut), in which case a 'patach' is inserted. And furthermore, the 'ayin' is invariably an 'e' (as in wet).
א גיטער וואך
Titmus (or טיטמוס)
Re: Precisely (give or take 100%)
Date: 2009-04-26 02:54 pm (UTC)So, an aleph requires a vowel diacritical to shift from 'o' (which is a common enough pronunciation for me to understand) to a 'u' (which I don't). This seems almost as silly as Hawaiian, at the other extreme. Why bother with other vowels at all, when you can simply torture poor old aleph with diacriticals?
Incidentally, what's the relationship between Yiddish orthography and modern Hebrew? This is horribly compelling stuff.
Well, I just thought it would be nice for Yiddish to feature on a blog for a change, but I should have known better than to trust Wikipedia. I'll try to do some actual work on the subject before next time...
Re: Precisely (give or take 100%)
Date: 2009-04-26 09:01 pm (UTC)http://www.jewfaq.org/graphics/yiddish.gif
A Hebrew speaker could pronounce some written Yiddish, but wouldn't have a clue what it meant, rather like me reading some Portuguese text.
Titmus