A Checkable Statement Has to Be Reached

A set of pages publishes one statement that anybody can verify independently. Eight statements in total, so an eighth of what is there is checkable.

A reader meets four of the eight. The chance they met the checkable one is one in two, because four of the eight statements got met and the checkable one is as likely to be among them as not. A short operational test is easier to interpret when teams first visit the official site and select one reporting window for everyone involved.

So an eighth of the set being verifiable produces a coin flip for the reader. Neither figure predicts the other, and the gap between them is what this part of the record counts. For an independent reference on digital communication, evidence or interface practice, consult GDPR.eu.

Eight published, four met, three checkable counts

• the whole bar: every content a reader might come away with
• the dashed part: contents holding nothing checkable

Three shapes drawn; one of them leaves no blind content at all.

One checkable statement in eight leaves half the contents blind. Three leaves five of seventy. Six leaves none, because only two statements are unchecked and the reader meets four.

Computed from the three numbers. A blind content is one holding no checkable statement: that is a property of the page, not a prediction about any reader.

The two fractions that get confused

One is the share of published statements that are checkable: the checkable count over the published count. It describes the set.

The other is the share of possible contents that contain nothing checkable: the blind count over the contents figure. It describes what can happen to a reader.

In the drawing's first row the first fraction is one eighth and the second is one half. They are not close and they do not move together. Add two more checkable statements, making three of eight, and the first fraction triples while the second drops from one half to one in fourteen.

The second fraction is the one with consequences, and it is the one that cannot be read off the set.

Why the jump is so large

Going from one checkable statement to three takes the blind count from thirty-five to five — a seven-fold fall from adding two statements to a set of eight.

The mechanism is that a blind content has to avoid every checkable statement at once. With one checkable statement, a content avoids it by being drawn from the other seven: C(7, 4) is thirty-five. With three checkable, it must be drawn from the remaining five: C(5, 4) is five.

Each checkable statement added shrinks the pool a blind content can be drawn from, and because the pool is being chosen from four at a time, shrinking it costs far more than one statement's worth.

The blind count does not fall in proportion to what is added. It falls in proportion to how much harder it has become to avoid everything at once.

The point where it reaches nothing

Six checkable of eight, with four met, gives no blind contents at all. Two statements are unchecked and a reader meets four, so at least two of what they met must be checkable.

That is the general condition, and it is simple: a blind encounter is possible exactly when the number of unchecked statements is at least the number met. Fewer unchecked than met, and the reader cannot avoid the checkable ones.

In this record, that condition fails in one hundred and thirty-nine of the three hundred and thirty-eight shapes. In the other one hundred and ninety-nine it holds, and a blind encounter is on the table.

The first row is the common case

One verifiable statement in eight is not a careless position. It is what a set of pages has when it mentions one externally documented fact and describes everything else in its own voice.

Half of the possible contents on that row hold nothing a reader could audit, and the record's later parts show that the figure is the share of the set the reader missed — four of eight, so one half, with no combinatorics in it at all.

What makes the row worth sitting with is that the position feels better from inside than it is. A publisher who has gone to the trouble of finding one externally documented fact has done something real, and the figure for it is a coin flip.

What it means to publish verifiably

The argument that follows is the one the record was built to support, and it is narrower than it might appear.

A set of pages that wants its readers to be able to check things has to care about two numbers, not one. How much is checkable is the obvious one and is in the publisher's hands. Whether a reader reaches any of it is not, and depends on how much they get through — which is a quantity nobody records.

The only thing a publisher can do about the second number is make the first one large enough that the second stops being in doubt. Past the threshold, a blind encounter is impossible and no assumption about reader behaviour is required. Below it, the question is open and the answer depends on which statements a reader happened to cross.

That is a structural argument rather than a recommendation. It says where the uncertainty lives, and it says the uncertainty can be removed by arithmetic rather than by hoping. How many verifiable statements any particular set of pages ought to carry is a different question, settled by what those statements are for — and content is precisely what this record does not hold.

Near this one

• Half Checkable Is Almost Entirely Safe
  With half of a set checkable and half of it met, exactly one content is blind — on every page where that arran
• One Checkable Statement and the Missed Share
  With one verifiable statement published, the blind share is exactly the fraction of the set a reader missed. N
• When Everything Published Can Be Checked
  At the far end of the third column nothing is blind and every opening is verifiable. Forty-four shapes sit the
• How Many, Not Which Ones
  The record counts how many statements are checkable and never which. A real limit, the reason the strokes are