The Propaganda

The newspaper today came with a conclusive advertisement about a shampoo. Now, since the prominent part of first page of the supplement carried it, and as the supplement happens to be the most educative-cum-informative part of the entire 100 odds pages, the advertisement was headlines (to me). The claim appeared so convincing, I decided to do the math. The irascible habit of pay attention to the asterisks helped.

The kind company took nearly 24 month old data, pertaining to the oriental tiger Thailand, to substantiate their point. The sample size of the survey was a gargantuan 1200 women. Now, Thailand is 21st in the list of most populated countries, led by China at the 1st, with a total population of 63,525,062 as on December 31, 2009. Also, the gender ratio of Thailand, as of - again - 2009, is 0.98. Feminists would love that figure for sure. Simply put, on 31st of December 2009, the number of women in Thailand were 32,083,365. 

63,525,062 = W + M.

63,525,062 = W+ 0.98W.

63,525,062 = 1.98W.

W = 63,525,062 / 1.98 = 32,083,365.

Now, lets put the aforementioned sample size in perspective. 

1,200 / 32,083,365 = 0.000037403, 

or 0.0037403%. 

For the sake of simplicity, conserving space and deliberate approximation, lets round it off to 0.004%. That is the number of ladies who were put to question by our kind company. Now, 80% of them, 960 of the sample  - supposedly - agreed to the quality.

960 / 32,083,365 = 0.000029922,

or 0.0029922%

Rounded off, that is 0.003% women in the nation or around 3 in 1000 women.

But the dear company has another claim put side by side. One must respect the fact and do the complete math. So, the world population in 2009 was 6,859,500,000. With gender ratio as 1.01, there were 3,412,686,567 ladies making the world a beautiful place. Again, putting the sample size in perspective, the figure we get is 0.000000352 or 0.0000352% or less than 4 ladies in 100,000 who were put to question and 0.000000281 or 0.0000281% or about 3 in 100,000, who, supposedly, liked it.

Oops! Did I make a calculation mistake? This figure sounds more like nobody liked it! Far cry from the propaganda of 80% women, (with an implicit) everywhere, liking it. Sigh... I should have paid more attention at the board  in school rather than the pretty girl with bouncy curly hair. Don't know which shampoo she used. But surely, she didn't look as dumb as the ones in the advertisement.

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Tail Piece:

The only consistency in the entire campaign was the ugliness of Ms. Shetty. I wonder how people tolerate such at shitty face!