Quoth Christopher Pyne in an interview on ABC Radio this morning:
There are a thousand ideas, there are 660 minutes of discussion on the summit program, which means for every idea there are 39.6 seconds put aside for discussing that particular idea.
So far this claim has been repeated by the ABC and others, without contention, for about 4 hours. It’s a great soundbite.
But 39.6 seconds of contemplation will show that Pyne’s maths is faulty. It runs thus:
660 minutes of talk time / 1000 ideas = 39.6 seconds per idea.
All good and well, except that ideas won’t be getting discussed serially. They will be discussed in parallel.
The conference is divided into 10 subject areas of 100 participants each. Assuming serial discussion in each stream, that takes the time per idea to 6.6 minutes each. Assuming working groups are composed of ten people, that takes it to 66 minutes each. About an hour per idea: brief but not all bad.
I can only assume that the journalists have been deprived of desktop calculators: multiplying and dividing things by multiples of ten is of course notoriously difficult to do mentally.
Maybe the terrorists stole them via email?
Update: Brendan Nelson spotted on tonight’s SBS news making the same argument. Does he doctor his own figures?
Game and set Mr Chester!
I think you’re being a bit harsh, Jacques. After all, Pyne is a politician (and hence probably a lawyer), and the journos are even less likely to be numerate than Pyne.
Although I had hoped for better from our ABC.
Awesum.
wot’d youse expect for 8centsaday?
It figures.
It really does illustrate the great divide in Australian politics.
These puns are not adding much to the discussion.
I’d add that this is the equal of any great piece of blogging.
Rats! Beaten to the click. If only I’d been a fraction earlier.
Sum guys have all the luck.
Just a symptom of the times I guess. I pine for the days when basic arithmetical competence was considered a plus.
On the strength of his ability with figures and analysis of process, it can’t be long before Pyne gets given shadow Treasury or Finance.
Hopefully as a result of this piece, Tony Jones et al (or production managers) will have handy calculators when interviewing Pyne (et al) on Lateline.
And in punning mood, given politician’s penchant for post hoc spin, perhaps it will be best to give them a calculator that does Reverse Polish Notation.
This reminds me. Can someone work this out? I know its a simple enough equation, but buggered if I know where to start exactly. If there are, around about, 6 billion of us on the planet and say we live for an overall average of around sixty years. Is it possible that each of us would live long enough for all of us to have our 15 minutes of fame? I can’t do ‘sums’ to save my life, but I’ve got a sneaky suspicion that Warhol might have been dead wrong and that it is actually impossible to give 6 billion people 15 minutes of fame within a 60 year time frame.
Just wondering.
Pyne is an idiot. When did the Government he was involved in have a serious attempt to listen to ideas from a broad range of backgrounds? You cannot criticize those who are doing exactly what you failed to do.
POT: Hey Kettle, your BLACK!
Caroline;
Based on the problem description — having to account for people being born and dying each year — your question sounds like a job for calculus.
It’s a pity I’m not very good at it.
Jeez, you’re hearking back to a by-gone era when journalists were literate and numerate and any 14 year old school leaver could do mental arithemetic faster than a modern hack with a calculator
Jacques:
Hmmm. Discussion time, many ideas — sounds like a wiki might be useful.
Does the summit actually include any networked consoles so participants can do collaborative work? Quickly check things at abs.gov.au, etc, etc…
If they did, it would be a good starter for continuing/annotating the discussion, adding in hrefs to particular submissions of interest and documents both within gov.au and the outside world.
I wonder if the 2020 folk talked to AGIMO first about collaborating in the 21st century? Probably not… too sensible.
Of course… that’s assuming 1000 people = 1000 ideas. Is it only one idea per person?
It also assumes unique ideas per participant. I imagine that everyone going into the arts & culture stream, for instance, has a variant on the single idea of “more money, please”.
Dave;
I’ve seen at least two wikis set up:
http://ozideas.wetpaint.com/
http://2020ideas.pbwiki.com/
Worth reading some of the general public submissions on the site, though there are a lot of them. Most people comment in most areas, as if they are filling in a form, though they actually have experience only in one area.
In a quick pass, I couldn’t find too many from people actually involved in the Yarts, and I denied myself the pleasure of reading what they said on other topics lest my own arts brain, trained by now on the blogosphere, went completely on the fritz.
But there is a pretty fair variety of responses on the question of a creative nation. A drumbeat to fund the ABC and SBS better, but a continuing line about throwing the whole thing to the marketplace as well.
The ABC has gone into this noticeably well armed with a battle cry statement of eleven pages about running a good service with decent Australian programming. Don’t be surprised if this turns out to be a coup for Auntie..
Politics is a funny business, and soundbytes will (unfortunately) almost always rule over reason. Not sure what the fuss is about here though – the Libs finally get a soundbyte repeated against the master of spin and you act like it’s a scandal.
FWIW, Pyne’s general conclusion about the summit was correct, even if the maths wasn’t accurate (and to be pedantic: his maths was accurate – though his underlying assumptions were not)
Some people will have multiple ideas, some ideas will be the same. Aren’t they also considering submissions from non summiteers?
Fact is, it doesn’t matter whether people get 39.6 seconds, 6.6 minutes, or even 66 minutes it’s still a waste of effort (in fact, all this organising into groups is going to cut down talk time as well). Each of the ideas is then presumably discussed, brainstormed, modified, discussed some more and voted on. In the end, each suggestion will be either vague aspirational BS, or direct requests for more money/intervention/support for pet projects.
The way some people in this thread are talking, you’d think you actually consider this whole fiasco a useful exercise.
An idea is not a proposal. As you will see from the public submissions, an idea can be two sentences. After that, the group will consider whether an idea cuts through, and whether it survives a consensus process.
In the yarts, for instance, putting an extra three hundred mill a year into the ABC (still a low amount for that kind of broadcaster) will be seen to have very useful ripple effects, and come to the surface. My bet is, it will survive, but with caveats about accountability.
Then the ALP has the rest of the year to work out how that could actually work, to create the proposal. (I would suggest that a public ceremony in which various senior broadcasters promise to be humble with the money, cross their hearts and hope to die, is not going to be enough).
Me, I’d be using performance indicators in the shadow of a guillotine, but that is why I am blogging on a rented flat and Mark Scott is at the 2020 summit.
I dunno, Fleeced, ideas are radical as legalising all drugs are actually making into the headlines – that’s worth something surely.
(I just wrote a letter to the local paper asking why our local member suddenly felt that banning bongs was going to improve our community. It’s about as logical as banning skydiving equipment, or shot glasses.)