What's in a number?

Yesterday I read a post citing a widely circulated stat that according to a recent survey 41% of the French population support a reduction to just 4 flights in a lifetime. 41%! This is a big proportion and, some would say, a sign of changing mentalities… or is it?

The debate and comments on this post were interesting: “I can’t wait to hear what the French would say when their tourism industry collapses”, “easy for the French to say this but how about Brits who have family in Australia or the US” (obviously French people do not have family overseas), “it is a sign of French culture and patriotism... they do not need to go anywhere because they are blessed with an amazing geography” (The French do like a bit of overseas travel too...), “this is an infringement on our right to travel freely”. Beyond the fact that these comments show the massive gulf in how ready people are to make meaningful changes to their lifestyles, I thought it was fascinating to see that all these people were not questioning that 41% and what it meant!

As a market researcher, I have spent my career looking for the meaning behind numbers and telling what I hope are meaningful stories. So I am trained to look for what is behind the numbers and whether they are actually as significant as they seem. I do not have my hands on this dataset but looking at some contextual data, I found that approximately 25% of the French adult population have never been on a plane and a further 30% fly very rarely (1 or 2 flights in their lifetime) so over half of the population are non or very infrequent flyers (Statista numbers from 2017 - likely still relevant). In that context, it is not far fetched to think that those people might agree that 4 flights in a lifetime is enough for any individual…

So yes 41% IS a big number, especially when interpreted with our cognitive bias of people in careers that involve flying for work or who live in circles where flying for holidays is very common. We forget that actually the majority of the population even in Western economies never or rarely flies (another stat for context: only 10% of the world population has ever been on a plane; only 35% of the French population took a flight in the last 12 months for a holiday). So unless that research shows that the 41% is driven by the minority of frequent flyers in France, I'd argue this stats is just an indication of the status quo and not a reason for hope that things are changing.

This post is not about whether reducing the number of flights we take is a good idea (that'll be for another post) but it is about how we all need to be very careful when we see single numbers being quoted in support of a particular argument - we have to look at these numbers critically. Not doing so is dangerous: in this case, at best it gives a false impression that things are changing, at worst it gives reasons for people to look upon your calls for change with derision.