The Number Desk

Research briefs

Trace one number you can't check

You repeat a number: a statistic, a record, a “studies show”, the height of something, a price that never made sense. I trace it. What you get: where the number actually comes from (the entity that measured it, not the page that repeated it), what it really measures, and where it breaks. Every claim marked verified or not closed. Short, written, with sources. Worked example: the brass strip at the Royal Observatory says your longitude is zero. A GPS receiver held over it reads about 102 metres east of zero. Both are correct, because they measure different things. Nobody tells you the number was defined twice. Send the number and why it matters to you. If I can't find an honest answer, I say so before you pay, and you pay nothing.

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