0/0 = . . . 0? That’s Australian math, mate!

Tom Davies writes:

I looked down on stats when I was at university, and now it’s the only area of maths which is of any use to me.

And he points us to this amusing example:

What’s great about this story is that it is happening in a “faraway land” (as the Gremlins researcher might say), and so I have no idea who the good guys and bad guys are supposed to be. No need to be happy that the bad guys blew it one more time, or to be frustrated that the good guys dropped the ball. I’ve never heard of the Burnet Institute (or, for that matter, the @BurnetInstitute) or the article in question. The 0/0 thing does look fishy, though, so good to see people getting called out on this sort of thing.

P.S. The above title is a joke. American math is just as bad! (And that last link came directly from the U.S. government.)

4 thoughts on “0/0 = . . . 0? That’s Australian math, mate!

  1. Hey, that’s kind of rude to stereotype Australian dialect like that, Andrew! Fix it and grab a stubby with me and come oggle at some top sheilas while listening to accadacca.

  2. This happens a lot in industry databases. The problem isn’t really 0/0. The problem is zero used as a stand-in for missing when zero is a valid value. This effectively is zero imputation which messes up averages, medians, everything!

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