I thought this might be of interest - providing they were electric cars the scheme seems workable. 

Robert
----------------------------------------------
The Patriotic Retirement Plan

"How Would You Fix the Economy?"

The St. Petersburg Times Newspaper, Business Section asked readers for ideas on "How Would You Fix the Economy?"

Dear Mr. President,

Please find below my suggestion for fixing America’s economy. Instead of giving billions of dollars to companies that will squander the money on lavish parties and unearned bonuses, use the following plan. You can call it the Patriotic Retirement Plan:

There are about 40 million people over 50 in the work force.

Pay them $1 million apiece severance for early retirement with the following stipulations:

1) They MUST retire. Forty million job openings - Unemployment fixed.

2) They MUST buy a new American CAR. Forty million cars ordered - Auto Industry fixed.

3) They MUST either buy a house or pay off their mortgage - Housing Crisis fixed.

It can't get any easier than that!

P.S. If more money is needed, have all members in Congress and their constituents pay their taxes...


-------------------------------------------------




Professor Robert Moore
School of Sociology and Social Policy
Eleanor Rathbone Building
The University of Liverpool
L69 7ZA

Telephone and fax: 44 (0) 1352 714456
________________________________________
From: email list for Radical Statistics [[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Paul Spicker [[log in to unmask]]
Sent: 22 March 2009 16:36
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Pie charts

I'm perplexed by this discussion.  Pie charts are a method of visualisation,
and whether or not it's appropriate to use them depends on what it is we're
trying to communicate.   They're not much good for quantities, but they are
useful for distinguishing broad orders of proportions.  Bar charts are good
for relative sizes but not much good for proportions.

I've included three illustrations.   In the pie charts, it's easy to
distinguish relative proportions of more or less than half, and more or less
than a quarter.  However, it's quite difficult to see that the pie on the right is exactly
half the area of the pie on the left.  In the stacked bar chart, the relative total size
of the columns is clearer, but both the component sizes and the relative
proportions are difficult to compare.  In the bar charts, it's immediately
obvious that the relative proportions of the second and third columns in
each set are different, but it's difficult to recognise either the
proportions  or the relative sizes of the totals.

I've deliberately left the figures off the graphics, because the test of a
visualisation is how well it conveys the information in its own right.   I
appreciate that the massed cohorts of Radstats can make more sense of a
visualisation if they have the source figures instead, so here they are:


Series:

X

Y

Z

Total

A

51.5
(51.5%)

 26
(26%)

  22.5  (22.5%)

100

B

24.25 (48.5%)

  12.25
(24.5%)

  13.5
(27%)

50


"Sometimes", Jane writes, "a table is all that is needed."  Yes, it's
usually possible to put more information in a table than in a graphic image;
the chart I put up earlier, on criminal justice statistics, was drawn
selectively from one column in a much fuller table in the Annual Abstract of
Statistics.  Unfortunately, much of our prospective audience won't easily
make sense of the figures.  That's why we need visualisations.  My own view
is that in this particular case, the pie charts are a better visualisation,
and tell us more, more accessibly, than the alternatives.

Paul Spicker
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