Mathematik und PR

"Your ideas and formulas are perfect and exactly what we are looking for"" Simon Singh hat im Guardian über seine Erfahrungen mit PR-Agenturen geschrieben:

I was asked to help promote a shopping exhibition by coming up with a formula that predicted the best day to start Christmas shopping. Of course, the perfect day had to coincide with the start of the shopping exhibition. I decided to string the company along for a while, to test the elasticity of their integrity. I told them: "The equation would lead to a graph that gave a value for each day in the run up to Xmas in terms of how good it would be to start shopping on that day, and I would engineer the equation so that the graph peaked on the day you require. There would be no real science behind the equation, but it would look sensible and convincing." I went so far as to suggest some of the factors that might decide the best day to start shopping, and Clare, the nice lady from the PR company, replied: "Your ideas and formulas are perfect and exactly what we are looking for and it would be great to confirm you working with us."

My Quest for a Perfectly Awful Formula (Guardian, 4.9.2009)