“Others pay twice as much.” And yet, I’m saving 75% if I take this deal. The deal is better than the copy reads, but still, the math is just awful.
Do you have any examples like this? Please click above to submit or forward to me at badmath at b-1.org.
This is an ad I set aside some time back. It took a few seconds to see what I found so wrong with this ad. Was it that this chart had no vertical axis, showing investment return over time? No.
It was the failure of the marketing department to catch the simplest of math errors. When we see a price rise from $10,000 to $14,197, it’s 5th grade math that will tell us the percent growth. 10000/14197 = 1.4197 or a 42% rise. Similarly, The $10,000 rise to $26,065 isn’t “Up 260%”, it’s actually up 161%. They can have their 1% extra due to rounding.
In the US, there’s a TV program called “Are You Smarter than a 5th Grader?” In the case of whoever edited this copy, I believe we have our answer.
