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Lies, Damned Lies and Cat Statistics

Posted by samzenpus on from the nine-lies dept.

spopepro writes "While un-captioned cats might be of limited interest to the /. community, I found this column on how a fabricated statistic takes on a life of its own interesting. Starting with the Humane Society of the United States' (HSUS) claim that the unsterilized offspring of a cat will '...result in 420,000 cats in 5 years,' the author looks at other erroneous numbers, where they came from and why they won't go away."

3 of 175 comments (clear)

  1. Re:No Don't Ruin This, I Need This! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Informative

    Reminds me of the following: http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/21/if-i-hadnt-killed-52-flies-as-a-child-how-many-descendants-would-they-have-had-by-now

  2. Do your own math by mugnyte · · Score: 3, Informative

    Age to maturity: 6 to 10 months
    Litters per year: 0 to 3
    Litter size: 1 to 8

    so, using a changing multipler for newborns of
        year1= 0 to 12 offspring
        year2,3,4,5 = 0 to 24 offspring

    i get values around
    end year1: 1 to 25 cats
    end year2: 1 to 300 cats
    end year3: 1 to 3900 cats
    end year4: 1 to 54k cats
    end year5: 1 to 835k cats

    So it pretty much stands as a useless range

  3. Comment removed by account_deleted · · Score: 4, Informative

    Comment removed based on user account deletion