More Fun with Numbers, from the NYT Business Pages
The Mickster performed the didn’t-need-to-be-heavy lifting on this sentence from Nick Bunkley’s August 22 reporting on the New York Times business pages:
Each of Pontiac’s 2,700 dealers sells, on average, just over one Solstice every two months, while each of Saturn’s 440 dealers sells about two of the Sky, which is produced in more limited numbers, every month. Pontiac plans to build 20,000 Solstices this year and is on pace to sell 18,000.
The Saturn Spin: Why isn’t the beautiful Pontiac Solstice selling as well as the less beautiful version of the same car, the Saturn Sky? The answer is that it’s not not selling as well …..
So the Solstice actually outsells the Sky, and not by a small margin. (According to this sentence, Pontiac sells more than 1,350 Solstices a month, while Saturn sells “about” 880 Skys.) This is a realization the piece’s author, the aptly named Nick Bunkley, is apparently trying to prevent. Why couldn’t he just give the straight sales figures for each model? Because it would get in the way of his narrative, which is that Pontiac is a “damaged” brand compared with Saturn.
That was too easy, Mickey.
