The mathematics of Jonathan Ross and Russell Brand
Why have 18,000 people complained to the BBC about Russell Brand and Jonathan Ross?
The figure is being used as a measure of the scale of public outrage. Of course, it is nothing of the sort.
If a number of unsavoury incidents cause equal amounts of offence, they will result in an unequal number of complaints.
It seems as if the complaints are distributed on a power law curve. A few incidents will garner a vast number of complaints, a long tail of equally offensive incidents will attract almost no complaints.
People who ordinarily would sit at home and fume quietly, picked up the idea that everyone else was complaining. They therefore complained themselves, conforming to the norm of people who were cross about this incident.
The BBC's sluggish reaction is explained partly by the fact that it is impossible in advance to know to which category (massive disaster or entirely unnoticed) a particular incident will belong to.
Does this mean that suspending Ross and Brand is an unreasonable over-reaction?
No.
In order for the BBC to avoid its output consisting of relentless tasteless jokes of this kind, it is important that it gets the sanction correct. It does this not by a proportionate reaction to each incident, but by a disproportionate one.
Most offensive pranks go unnoticed and the originators entirely unpunished. If this is not to encourage offensive pranks, it is important than the sanction for any prank that comes at the top of the power law curve is harsh.
That way the punishment multiplied by the chance of being punished is adequate to act as a disincentive.
So while it may seems as if a disproportionate fuss is being made over this one incident, that is entirely the point.
