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Mathematik und PR

Von / 7. September 2009 / 1 Kommentar
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“Your ideas and formulas are perfect and exactly what we are looking for””

Simon Singh hat im Guardian über seine Erfahrungen mit PR-Agenturen geschrieben:

I was asked to help promote a shopping exhibition by coming up with a formula that predicted the best day to start Christmas shopping. Of course, the perfect day had to coincide with the start of the shopping exhibition.

I decided to string the company along for a while, to test the elasticity of their integrity. I told them: “The equation would lead to a graph that gave a value for each day in the run up to Xmas in terms of how good it would be to start shopping on that day, and I would engineer the equation so that the graph peaked on the day you require. There would be no real science behind the equation, but it would look sensible and convincing.”

I went so far as to suggest some of the factors that might decide the best day to start shopping, and Clare, the nice lady from the PR company, replied: “Your ideas and formulas are perfect and exactly what we are looking for and it would be great to confirm you working with us.”

My Quest for a Perfectly Awful Formula (Guardian, 4.9.2009)

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  1. #1 1984
    11. September 2009

    ‘But the whole universe is outside us. Look at the stars!
    Some of them are a million light-years away. They are out of
    our reach for ever.’

    ‘What are the stars?’ said O’Brien indifferently. ‘They are
    bits of fire a few kilometres away. We could reach them if we
    wanted to. Or we could blot them out. The earth is the cen-
    tre of the universe. The sun and the stars go round it.’

    Winston made another convulsive movement. This time
    he did not say anything. O’Brien continued as though an-
    swering a spoken objection:
    ‘For certain purposes, of course, that is not true. When
    we navigate the ocean, or when we predict an eclipse, we of-
    ten find it convenient to assume that the earth goes round
    the sun and that the stars are millions upon millions of ki-
    lometres away. But what of it? Do you suppose it is beyond
    us to produce a dual system of astronomy? The stars can be
    near or distant, according as we need them. Do you suppose
    our mathematicians are unequal to that? Have you forgot-
    ten doublethink?’