Saturday, April 08, 2006

Journalistic innumeracy, part 872

Rents in Leipzig are cheaper than rents in Manhattan! This astonishing news is brought to you by the New York Times. But they still manage to get it wrong:

What Mr. Amrhein is paying, per month per square foot, in Leipzig: about 40 cents
What a similar gallery would cost, per month per square foot, in Chelsea: $75

Er, no. Chelsea rents might be high, but they're not $75 per square foot per month. Actually, they're $75 per square foot per year. The number they should have used is $6.25: one twelfth of $75. Alternatively, they could have given rent per square foot per year in Leipzig, which is $4.80.

The Times knows this, of course. There's even a box in the print article (not online) which gives accurate monthly rents for a 3,800 square-foot space: $23,750 in Chelsea, $1,470 in Leipzig. But no one seems to have stopped to think whether the ratio of those two numbers was the same as the ratio between $75 and $0.40. There's arts journalists for you.

Posted by Felix at 10:50 EST