On 2021-01-27 21:04, Roger Clarke wrote: > 'But 9 out of 10 dentists recommend....'.
I suppose the way to get a statistic like that is to ask 10 real dentists if they always advise their patients to avoid "Success" toothpaste at all costs. One might say it's rubbish and should be avoided at all costs, but the remaining nine furrow their brows and say "well they're all rubbish, but I suppose it's no worse than any of the other brands..." Voilà!! Nine out of ten dentists recommend... I remember my father, an Engineer by profession, pointing out to me once that most people squeezed a little cylinder of toothpaste onto the brush which was the same length as the bristles. The toothpaste manufacturers knew this too, of course, and they also knew that the volume of a cylinder was proportional to the square of it's diameter. So they only had to increase that by (say) 10%, which most people wouldn't notice, in order to increase sales by 21%. His remedy was to drill a much smaller hole in the original cap which would decrease the volume considerably, important when five children and their parents are in the house. David Lochrin _______________________________________________ Link mailing list [email protected] http://mailman.anu.edu.au/mailman/listinfo/link
