Manufacturing Plausible Reports

Sometimes in the office, we're called upon to write reports, to produce figures perhaps to display a trend over time, or to compare performance of one organisation against another. Should you ever be called upon to do the same, I thought I'd write down some helpful tips to get you started.

1. When generating statistics, don't invent numbers ending in 0. Believable figures usually end in either a 3 or a 7, and if you can use a decimal point, that's even better. For example, someone asks you for expenditure figures on salaries for the last five years. As a noob, I'd come up with something resembling -


 2006   $100,000
 2007   $100,000
 2008   $100,000
 2009   $100,000
 2010   $100,000


But with many years of experience, I'd write:

 2006   $100,004.87

 2007   $100,006.93

 2008   $100,009.03

 2009   $100,100.17

 2010   $100,101.19

2. Include cryptic footnotes below your table. Clearly if you write something unintelligible that nobody else understands, you'll be regarded as a boffin. For instance, below the salary expenditures add this:

(a) Source: AGONxx12.23 report{@29-03-2011.14.47.01.111}
(b) Exfoliated expenditure, semi-adjusted for CPI, including Krypton Factor

3. Use a tiny font. This indicates that you're very scientific and precise. By contrast a large font is for a kindergarten.

Putting it all together, here's our final table.

Salary Expenditure 2006-2010

 2006     $100,004.87
 2007     $100,006.93
 2008     $100,009.03
 2009     $100,100.17
 2010     $100,101.19
(a) Source: AGONxx12.23 report{@29-03-2011.14.47.01.111}
(b) Exfoliated expenditure, semi-adjusted for CPI, including Krypton Factor