A week back attending a function i was seated next to a statistician.
Honestly one tend to forget that we do have a statistics department in our midst, possibly feeding the authorities with reams of data and facts.
In this day of the Internet, somehow we have somehow dismiss obtrusively what come out of the statistics department, well if we have the Wikepedia, google and other Internet sources of knowledge and information no one can be blamed!
Now back to the statistician....i got into a cosnversation with him and possibly the same mundane questions people ask(just like how's the weather ) if one does get to meet them:
Me: Hmm must be an interesting job, by the way, what's the population of Sarawak
Statistician(in a prompt , authoritative manner): 2.5 Millions give and take.
Me: What is our neighbours Sabah's population?
Statistician: 3.2 million roughly!!!
Me: Uhhh? i can still remember in the 80s Sabah has a lesser population, what did they eat? 'Manok?(Chicken in Tagalog)
Statistician gave me a real look of confusion and thinking i must be crazy ,sorry sir you didn't get my drift(ha..)
The conversation continues..
Me: How do we measure poverty?
Statistician: Well, the poverty income level is defined as below Rm800 and our poverty rate in Sarawak is only around 3-4%!!(as he emphasised it rather proudly)
Let me do a bit of statistics work..so Sarawak have around only 100,000 poor people.
Me: How's that? I know for a fact that rural populace on average earns possibly less than that figure.
Statistician(now looking at me in a more quizzical manner): Ah ha we have a way of dealing with this, you see a farmer or fisherman will not have a salary of more than RM800 because of their self sufficiency and of course you cant label them as poor , so we come up with a kind of variation to this sof poverty for the rural folks...
Me (waiting in anticipation for the eureka exclamation) : how's that done sir?
Statistician: you see we collate the frequency chicken meals they have per week or month and a family that has quite a frequent chicken dinner despite earning less than RM800 will not categorise as being POOR!!!
Wow, what great logic and trust statistics to come up with such innovative and may i say a "skewed " chicken idea to redefine poverty into a more palatable(pardon the pun) figure.
Me(just not giving up and probe further..): Sir, what about the urban folks? we know for a fact that even a RM1500 income for family will not be sufficient for them to afford eating chicken frequently! You see, there is always the Kancil and low cost housing payments to take care of and a plethora of other incidental expenses that one has to endure living in towns or cities.
Statistician: (Gave me a wild look and change the subject)......This H1N1 is a scary thing !!
Me: ya indeed.
And i turned to a person sitting on my right ..."what do you think Doctor?"
That's another story and at the function the chicken lunch is great and now i felt a bit more pleased knowing that a chicken meal is indeed still a measure of a person's poverty level!!! ha!
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