ACCORDING TO a recent survey conducted by the Greenfield Online team, more than 64 per cent of people bought their music from shops while 41 per cent downloaded their tunes from the Interweb.

This means that 105 per cent of people bought music this year.

Of course, five per cent could be made up of multi-dimensional quantum particles which have a nasty habit of doing all sorts of things when they are not observed, but you think someone would have noticed them buying records.

The 'Fact of the Week' survey is made up of 1,000 Internet respondents who answer questions online. Since people get paid for providing this information it would seem to suggest that either Greenfield made a howler when it sent out its informative press release about music buying, or someone has worked out a way of making a bit of extra cash by hacking into the automatic survey system.

Greenfield claims that its margin of error is is approximately +/-3 per cent. It would seem it was a little higher than that.

Still, it is proof that 82 per cent of statistics are made up.

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