While interesting, I think journalists should try to avoid doing comparisons that are meaningless.
I stumbled upon:
"...Of those, 3,886 have been around for more than 200 years. As a point of comparison, only one in every four U.S. companies founded in 1994 was still operating in 2004..."
What is the relevance there? To me it sounds as useful as saying "as a point of comparison, only two in every 6 companies founded in 1978 where still open in 1986". Why that range? how does a company opened up in 1994 and closed in 2004 have to do with the 200-year companies? Wouldn't it be more useful to say "as comparison, only 4 US companies are 200-year old or more"?
I agree, in fact to go even further the upper limit would also have to be specified. For example 3886 of the 1000000 companies founded in the past 1500 years in Japan have survived giving a 0.3886% survival rate. Since we have no idea how many companies were founded, the survival rate is completely unknown. It would be better to compare a country with a similar age such as China if they want to make an interesting comparison.
I stumbled upon:
"...Of those, 3,886 have been around for more than 200 years. As a point of comparison, only one in every four U.S. companies founded in 1994 was still operating in 2004..."
What is the relevance there? To me it sounds as useful as saying "as a point of comparison, only two in every 6 companies founded in 1978 where still open in 1986". Why that range? how does a company opened up in 1994 and closed in 2004 have to do with the 200-year companies? Wouldn't it be more useful to say "as comparison, only 4 US companies are 200-year old or more"?
Did I miss something here?