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Numbers that do not add up
Ang ARMANOS team7 min
The same quantity read twice
A number can be checked against itself long before anyone checks it against the world. Read it on one page, then look for it again on the next one.
On one showcase the country count is one figure on a page and a larger figure on its neighbour. Neither page says which of the two is the count.
Both figures can be true at different moments, and that is exactly the trouble. A quantity that moves between two clicks has no day attached to either of its values.
| Read on two pages of one showcase | What stands there |
|---|---|
| Countries covered | 150+ on one page, 195+ on the next |
| Cities covered | 1400+ on one page, 1,400+ on another |
| Price it starts at | €1.99 on one page, $2 on another |
One page against itself
The gap does not need two pages. On another showcase a single page carries 5,000,000+ and 5,000k+ at once, and the same company's page in another language says more than 10 million.
A reader who notices starts guessing which of the three was rounded up for effect. That guess is the whole cost of a number nobody read back.
Rounding is not the complaint here. Both forms round one quantity, and they round it to different places on the same screen.
No method and no date
Not one number in the list below says how it was produced or on what day. Not one of them is a link to anything.
A case with no owner
Numbers also arrive wrapped in stories. One showcase reports a studio that lost two accounts in three weeks and an agency running 80 advertising accounts at once.
Neither story carries a name, a logo, a link or a picture of the result. A third one says customers have doubled or tripled their revenue, and there is nobody left to ask.
What a checkable number looks like
The same reading turned up numbers that hold, and those are the ones worth copying. Each of them can be verified from outside the page that prints it.
- 1
A view counter
Printed as a plain count, and the field that would let it be inflated sits at zero on every article opened.
- 2
A version and its date
An exact build number, the day it shipped and three changelog entries on the page itself.
- 3
Reading time
About 230 words a minute, holding on four lessons out of four.
Where reading time falls over
That same honest reading time breaks the moment the page is translated. In one language the line promises a minute for an article of 2280 words, and in another it promises 36 minutes for a text that takes twelve.
Nothing was measured in either case: the line is generated and never looked at again. A number that nobody reads back is the shape the whole problem takes.
Four questions to any number
Three of the four are answered without leaving the page.
None of the four needs an account or a login of any kind. They work on a phone while you stand in a queue.
- 1
Read it twice
Find the same quantity on a second page of the same site.
- 2
Ask when
A number with no date cannot be re-checked and cannot expire.
- 3
Ask how
A share needs the count it came out of and the day that count was taken.
- 4
Try to click it
A number that is not a link is a number with nothing behind it.
The same four questions to us
A figure typed in by hand under a name the stand knows turns it red.
The day this was written sits at the top of the entry, and the file the reading was written up in is named at the bottom. That answers the second question here, and the fourth one gets a name instead of a link, because that file is not published.
What this does not claim
- It does not claim any of those numbers is false. A number with no method behind it is unproven, which is a different thing and a weaker one.
- It does not claim the reading was exhaustive. It was about a hundred pages over two passes, and a page rewritten since then carries whatever it carries now.
- Our own rule covers one thing only: the figure on the page equals the figure in the measurement file. Whether the measurement itself was taken well is a separate question, and a stand answers it rather than a page.
- It does not claim every number needs a link. A number small enough to count by eye should be countable by eye, and for that it is enough to name what was counted.
Where you can see this yourself
Every number above taken from someone else's site is quoted from the first file named below.
- The reading was written up in one place
- docs/СОПЕРНИКИ-ПОЛНАЯ-КАРТА.md
- Quantities written by name come out of one measurement file
- apps/web/measured.json
- The figure is substituted when the page is built
- apps/web/content/чтение.ts
Questions
- Why is none of the sites named?
- A claim about a named product ages within a week, and by then the reader cannot re-check it. Their numbers above come from a file that records the days they were read.
- Is rounding dishonest?
- No. A plus sign and a round figure are ordinary. What is not ordinary is two different roundings of one quantity on one page.
- What does a date next to a number buy me?
- It tells you when the number was true, and that is the only way to ask whether it still is.
- Do you print numbers with no source?
- The reading time at the top of this entry is typed by hand, and no stand checks it. The numbers taken from other sites come from the file named above.
- Can I check any of this without installing anything?
- Yes. The check reads 12 values in your own browser and sends nothing anywhere.
Next to this
Promise registry
A row for every claim: what does it and which check guards it.
A window wider than its screen
A contradiction inside one browser and how often it shows.
How a promise gets checked
What to open, run or read, and in what order.
Free fingerprint check
12 values read in your browser, with nothing sent anywhere.
Put one of our numbers through it
The check reads 12 values and sends nothing anywhere.