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Shoutout to the $4 parking meter that made me check the actual rate of return on my "data driven" gym app
Last week I paid $4 to park for an hour in downtown Denver, then saw my gym app charge me $12 a month for a plan it says members save on. I got curious and looked up how that savings number gets made, and it turns out it's based on a sample of about 40 users from one single gym location in 2022. That 40 person sample got repeated in a press release, then a shopping blog, and now it floats around like it's a national stat. I'm not saying the app is a scam, but I am saying I was repeating a savings figure that traces back to one room of people. How do you all check a company's own number before you use it in an argument?
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leo_johnson1d ago
Man, I feel this. What worked for me was just googling the exact number plus the word "source" and following it back until it either hit a real study or fell apart at a press release. If the trail ends at one gym or one blog, I stop repeating it and say where it came from instead, which honestly makes the point better anyway. Have you tried tracing the next stat that bugs you and seeing how far the chain goes?
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