Thursday, August 16, 2007

Methodology Explained

I put up a comment in the blog ThingAMaBaby about my post product recall statistics in US for January 2007 and someone called AJ remarked that my methodology and source were unclear. So here's for you AJ, my bad!
  1. The data source is US Consumer Product Safety Commission at recall.gov.
  2. I looked at January 2007's data and it reported that there were 29 recalls.
  3. Each recall, for instance, Hong Teng Trading (USA) Inc. Recalls Electric Oil Lamps Due To Shock and Fire Hazards, shows information like total units (3,900 units) and per unit cost ($1). The dollar value was calculated by multiplying total units and per unit cost.
  4. This dollar value was pegged to the country of manufacture.
  5. Steps 1 to 4 were repeated for each recall.
  6. Total dollar value of recalled products by manufacturing country was then derived.
I should have explained the methodology but better late than never.

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