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Dubious Statistics Watch: Thanksgiving Retail Sales
by Felix Salmon
Nov 26, 2007
Nov 26, 2007
Bloomberg News seems to be running two stories – on the same subject, and by the same authors – at the same time. The first has quite an apocalyptic headline: "U.S. Consumers Spent Average of 3.5% Less on Shopping". Which is scary since we were given to understand that sales would rise by 4% or so over the Thanksgiving weekend. But then comes the second story: "Holiday Sales Increase; U.S. Shoppers Spend Less on Average" – which is just plain weird. Apparently total sales on Black Friday were up by 8.3%, and the 3.5% decline was in sales per person, which wasn't at all clear in the first story.
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