8 mn rats in NY? Legend might be flawed
7 Nov 2014 5:55 AM IST
Jonathan Auerbach, a 26-year-old statistician pursuing a doctorate at Columbia University, recently won a competition sponsored by the 180-year-old Royal Statistical Society of London. Auerbach claimed the prize with a paper in which he made the case that there are far fewer rats in the city than almost anyone had assumed.About 6 million fewer.
By Auerbach’s calculations, the rat population is a mere 2 million, give or take 150,000. In arriving at that total, he debunked the long-perpetuated idea that there was one rat for every person in the city. New York’s population stood at 8,405,837 as of July 2013, according to the Planning Department.
But in his paper - published in the statistical journal Significance under the title ‘Does New York City Really Have as Many Rats as People?’ - he called the one-person, one-rat idea ‘an urban myth.’
It is enough to make one wonder what might be next. Perhaps Auerbach’s work will provide David Letterman with fresh material.
Letterman joked about encountering ‘rats as big as cats’ after he moved to the Ed Sullivan Theater in 1993.
Or perhaps Auerbach’s paper will provide a plot twist for the vampire-centric cable television drama The Strain, which already has a rat exterminator in its cast.
By Auerbach’s calculations, the rat population is a mere 2 million, give or take 150,000. In arriving at that total, he debunked the long-perpetuated idea that there was one rat for every person in the city. New York’s population stood at 8,405,837 as of July 2013, according to the Planning Department.
But in his paper - published in the statistical journal Significance under the title ‘Does New York City Really Have as Many Rats as People?’ - he called the one-person, one-rat idea ‘an urban myth.’
It is enough to make one wonder what might be next. Perhaps Auerbach’s work will provide David Letterman with fresh material.
Letterman joked about encountering ‘rats as big as cats’ after he moved to the Ed Sullivan Theater in 1993.
Or perhaps Auerbach’s paper will provide a plot twist for the vampire-centric cable television drama The Strain, which already has a rat exterminator in its cast.
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