Percentage calculation problems or The shrunken bodies

Statista is always worth a look if you’re no statistics hater (and speak German). Today’s stats of the day about the question “How tall are you?” (» filtered by sex), and 22358 adult Germans had been asked.

The unfiltered overview shows 2.9% for the really big ones (to which I also belong, thanks to my 190 cm), rounded on top of the bars for clarity:

(190 cm and taller: 2.9%)

You can also enter a number to compare to – and the result is:

Your reply: 190.0 cm
98.0% are smaller than 190 cm.
2.0% are like you taller than 190 cm.

Oops, did 0.9% of the people suddenly shrink? Or how else could this result be explained then? And why “are like you taller than 190 cm”?

If I enter 189 cm for testing purposes, I get: “96.8% are smaller than you. 3.2% are taller than you.” So nobody is 189 cm tall? Are 0.3% 189 cm tall and 2.9% taller, or 1.2% 189 cm and 2.0% taller? For 154 cm, the numbers “2.2%/97.8%” are reported, basically matching the bar graph, but here, too, with the words “smaller” and “taller” without mentioning the size of exactly 154 cm.

Well, apparently there’s room for improvement… but the title still says “BETA”. Let’s see if the error report that I sent them (they got a special link for that) will have any effect.