Timely Snow

The (Ongoing) Vitality of Mythical Numbers – Does ID theft really cost $48 billion a year? By Jack Shafer

As it happens, my wife and I were just discussing the original “Mythical Numbers” paper over the weekend (in the context of predictions about effects of Avian Flu.

The article quotes one of the more egregious examples from the original paper (Singer. M. (1971). The vitality of mythical numbers, Public Interest, 23, pp. 3-9.)

In the early 1950s the Kefauver Committee published a $20 billion estimate for the annual “take” of gambling in the United States. The figure actually was “picked from a hat.” One staff member said: “We had no real idea of the money spent. The California Crime Commission said $12 billion. Virgil Petersen of Chicago said $30 billion. We picked $20 billion as the balance of the two.”

He also cites a paper I hadn’t seen: Reuter, P. (1984). The (continued) vitality of mythical numbers. Public Interest, 75, Spring, 135-147.

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