From a student newspaper at Oregon State University:
Approximately, 2,000 rapes occur each day, or one about every five minutes. The Daily Barometer misprinted this fact in an article that appeared in the Jan. 19, 2006 edition of The Daily Barometer.
The Daily Barometer staff regrets any misunderstanding or inconveniences caused by this error. Link
Obviously, the error had to do with numbers. Blogger The Volokh Conspiracy spotted the initial mistake (read about it here) and contacted the paper. Then the paper printed the correction. The error, however, was a real mind-boggler. Here's what the paper printed:
According to a press release issued by the Women’s Center, 2,000 rapes occur every five minutes.
Notice anything strange in the paper's correction? Volokh did:
...A "rate of about one every 5 minutes" would be about 300 daily ((60/5) x 24), not about 2000 daily. The Women's Center press release was also mistaken (on at least one of the statistics, and maybe both); and again a little multiplication would have helped catch this.
So, to recap: It appears that the math in the press release was wrong. The press release was then incorrectly reported by the paper. Then the paper made a correction, which clarified things by citing the incorrect number from the press release. Calculator anyone?
