...and statistics
`RESEARCH . . . by the WA [Western Australia] Health Department . . . shows a person . . . in East Fremantle has a 25 per cent chance of dying due to smoking.... Between 1980-85 there wre 117 deaths due to smoking out of a total of 468 deaths in the area, a rate of 250 deaths in every 1,000.' (The West Australian, 1 July) IT is still an oversimplification to say that anyone dies 'due to smoking'. Secondly, only an East Fremantle resident who smokes risks death from a smoking-related disease, so that to say the chances for each and every East Fremantleite are 25 per cent is fatuous.
(£20 goes to Professor John Fox, of Perth, Western Australia.) Send examples to `. . . and statistics'; £20 for the best published and £10 for every other published — the first Opened if two or more cover the same example.
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