The first thing I think when I read about any innovation is “does it really work?” — the evidence was addressed by a single paragraph:

After 13 weeks of the program, 5 per cent of children improved in language tests administered by the foundation workers and the teachers. The number of three-year-olds who passed the tests after the program doubled.

Which tells us very little. Is that 5 per cent figure net of the children who did worse? Or is it gross? Why is the three year old improvement stated differently? Did the journalist just feel that it read better to avoid a similar turn of phrase, or did the educator phrase it that way for some reason? Obviously it makes a difference whether the 3 year old pass rate increased from 1% to 2% or 50% to 100%. Most importantly — as 13 weeks is a long time in a child’s life, especially a three year old — you would expect improvements no matter what. A trial with a control group, and blind administration of the tests would make the figures much more convincing.

No doubt there is better evidence available, as “other preschools in the area are clamouring for the program”, so it’s a shame that the journalist couldn’t have presented that evidence in their article.

The example I have in mind has less geopolitical significance, but will probably be more interesting for most readers.

A company named PopCap Games publish a nice little game called ‘Plants vs. Zombies’. I played the demo for the allotted 60 minutes when it was originally released, and then forgot about it when my trial expired.

About a week ago they released a free Flash version, which uses a subset of the plants and zombies from the full game, and playing that got me interested in buying the full version again.

The game sells for USD20 or AUD30, which at current exchange rates is a bit rich — the Australian dollar is buying 92 US cents at the moment. Just yesterday I bought another game, Machinarium — which also sells for USD20 — for AUD22.32.

So I sent a tweet to PopCap enquiring about their pricing:

@popcap_games why is PvZ AUD30, when USD20 is only AUD22?

To their credit, they replied quickly, but I didn’t find their answer convincing:

@tgdavies USD price displayed is pre-tax which is added in the cart. International prices include sales tax.

To get 22 to 30 you need more than 30% tax — Australia’s GST is only 10%, and I think paying that is my responsibility as the person ‘importing’ the game.

Of course, the real reason is that as recently as March the Aussie dollar was only buying 65 US cents — which gives you about AUD30 for USD20. PopCap simply haven’t adjusted their prices.

I wish they could have said that, or just “I don’t know”, instead of invoking some mythical tax!

PopCap aren’t the only company whose Australian prices are out of whack — the cheapest 15″ MacBook Pro is AUD600 more expensive than a simple exchange rate + tax calculation would suggest.

The State Transit Authority’s own figures show the number of people travelling without a ticket or with the incorrect ticket has shot up by more than 40 per cent in the past year.

Is this true? Unfortunately it’s contradicted by the very next paragraph:

From March 1 to May 31, 2008, officers from the STA’s Revenue Protection Unit inspected 10,151 buses, fined 2628 passengers and cautioned 1590 others. In the same period this year, they inspected 14,134 buses, fining 3780 passengers and cautioning 1857 others.

So the number of people fined has shot up, but the number of busses inspected has shot up by about the same amount, leaving the people fined per bus inspected figure unchanged at about 1 in 4.

If you add people fined to people cautioned, then the figure per bus has declined very slightly, so perhaps the number of people travelling without a ticket has fallen!

Broken images everywhere and copy which refers to the old iPod nano. Surely the updates should have been ready for weeks, and deploying them should be a press of a button!