A Nielsen study released yesterday confirmed what the majority of Americans already guessed to be the case, and what the rest were utterly unsurprised to hear.
"The data shows definitively that the expected outcome of this study did indeed occur," Dave Johnson, a statistician with Nielsen group, said in a press conference. "We're as completely nonplussed about it as you are."
Johnson noted that the percentage of the expected outcome was accurate to within 2.3% of the pre-study predictions, but added that "that extra 2% is sort of surprising, I guess. It was within the predicted variance, though, so not really that much."
Further analysis of the study, conducted over five years, indicated that not only was the outcome completely predictable, the topic of study was itself both uninteresting and unimportant.
"I mean, I could have guessed that that was the case," New York resident Mary Jarvis said, upon hearing about the results, "but really, who cares? Why spend so much money finding out something so utterly irrelevant to any real issues?" A preliminary study of reactions to the study indicates that as many as 78% of Americans share this feeling, though the data has yet to be analyzed.
Nielsen is currently in the process of conducting a study of their recent studies to find out how many of their outcomes are, in fact, entirely expected.
"Currently we're guessing that somewhere along the lines of 83% of our studies fall into this category, but the final results might end up as high as 87%," Johnson said, "which result wouldn't really be all that surprising."