Pedestrian

This is a clip from the nightly Mosaferan [Travelers] comedy series which airs on IRIB3. It was directed by Rambod Javan, who also stars in the show [the man on the right in opening clip].

Bahram [on the left] and Ramin [on the right] are looking for the number of criminals in Tehran. They go to two statistic centers. In the first, the numbers offered them show that in a city of roughly 15 million, only 252 or so are criminals [thieves, killers, etc].

In the second center, they are given numbers that show that in a city of 15 million, only 3152 individuals are NOT criminals.

When they question these numbers the employee at the center tells them:

“Moo laa darzesh nemireh. Aamareh ma daghigh o elmiyeh. agar thou toonesti khalafeh eena ro sabet koni, man 50 million toman behet midam.”

[There is not an inch of inaccuracy in these stats. The stats are accurate and scientific. If you can find anything wrong with them, I'll give you 50 million Tomans, and I'll add in an extra 50 million.]

Bahram and Farid contemplate why they can not get a hold of accurate stats and they conclude that that is because “stastics is related to issues which can not be considered alone.” [other factors must be considered when deciding on what #s to produce/show]

They decide to “create” stats of their own by combining the numbers they have received.

In the end, Bahram is seen contemplating the numbers they’ve received in his mind:

“we realize that statistics really mean next to nothing here. Stats are only useful for seminars and round tables and TV shows where nice, colorful histograms are shown.”

[right about here almost everybody goes back to the presidential debates where diagrams and histograms were a nightly staple.]

Bahram continues: “it [statistics] is used to decorate the room of state officials. And there, they use diagrams, that thank god, only always show an upward trend.[positive change]”

[It is quite common to "change" stats to show positive developments in agriculture, education, the economy, etc. Ahmadinejad was accused of doing so on numerous occasions during the debates. In fact, when Ahmadinejad was shown negative diagrams in the presidential debates on TV by rivals, he concluded that those facts and figures were produced by "Zionist entities".]