Having circulated my comments, I have received a correction. Chris
Theobald <[log in to unmask]> from Edinburgh has written to point out
that the graph 17 March should *not* be read as stacked areas, even though
it is shaded to indicate it. The clue is in the text "just over a quarter
of a million students in 98/99" which you can obtain only by taking the
two values at the right of the graph (160,000 and 95,000) and adding them.
It is, in my taxonomy, a multiple line graph and shows growth in both
FT and PT numbers.
I am, therefore, doubly unrepentent in that the graph has the wrong form,
and does not show the true total. When correctly understood, the graph
indeed contradicts the text in that FT numbers may have been flat for the
one year but, over the period 94/99, FT numbers have grown by 20,000 and
PT numbers by 35,000, which would be less than 20,000 FTEs.
William F Buckley quotes an unnamed professor, "No proposition is so
simple that it can't be rendered unintelligible to me by putting it on a
graph."
R. Allan Reese Email: [log in to unmask]
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