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Monday, December 15, 2008

New math

Oh, I forgot to mention one thing that puzzled me about Table 4 in the OIG's Audit Analysis. It shows the percentage of applicants that failed for each of the 21 different causes. For a few of the listed causes, the OIG said 0.1% of applicants failed for that reason. It's been a long time since I took a math course, but I'm sure 0.1% is one in a thousand. There were only 260 audits.

If one applicant failed for a given reason, that would be 0.4% of the sample (OK, 0.3846%, but we're rounding up).

How could any percentage less than 0.4% appear in that table? Am I missing something?

1 comment:

  1. Anonymous12:56 PM

    The table you are referring to represents the results of the audits extrapolated to the entire population, not just the sample.

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