Where are all the editors?

A headline from today's National Post - "House Prices Skyrocket 50% in 10 years: Study". Does anyone actually read what they write before publishing it and where are all the editors? To say that prices have "skyrocketed" over 10 years 50% is ridiculous. A gain of 50% over 10 years is equal to annual compounded rate of 4.07%. Would anyone write a headline - "Your time deposit at the bank has skyrocketed 4.07% p.a. for 10 years." And yet the result is the same - a 50% appreciation over 10 years.

Another item, this one from a newsletter says this about oil: "Global demand is rising exponentially, global supply is dwindling." How can anyone get so many things wrong in so few words? First of all, global supply of oil is neither dwindling or diminishing, it is growing and nobody disputes that. The question is whether it is keeping pace with rising demand and on that score does the writer know what "exponential growth" means? Would anyone call growth or 3% or 5% per year exponential? Not in a million years. Even growth in the number of mobile phone users in China is not exponential and global demand for oil has grown at less than 3% annually for the past 10 years and is forecast to grow at 2% or less over the next 5 years.

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