Great and Clever comeback!

[tarheel91]

mirgro said:

tarheel91 said:

mirgro said:

 

Alright then, I guess BMW's quality overall has jsut fallen a whole lot then. Like I said, one of my friends was left with the door handle in his hands, seriously, and it cost him several hundred to fix.

What didn't you get about "the plural of anecdote is not data."  One isolated event doesn't make an entire brand terrible.  Say one guy's Civic's engine blows.  Does that suddenly make Honda engines unreliable?  No, everyone will agree they're generally bulletproof.  As the saying goes, shit happens.

Also, I'm doubting he had to pay anything for it.  BMW has a warranty which makes every sort of maintenance and repair 100% free for the first 3-4 years.  If it's older than that, I doubt he was the first owner, and something as simple as a door handle sounds like it was much more an owner-related issue than any design flaw (i.e. the first owner's kid thrashing the door handle to pieces getting in and out of the car).

Well that would explain that one incident, but definitely doesn't explain the amount of Zs my mechanic has seen. Plural of anecdote is data.

No, no it's not.  One of the first things you learn in statistics is that you need a sufficiently large, random sample in order to be able to make conclusions based on data.  A few anecdotes is neither a sufficiently large sample, nor is it a random one.

Second, you do realize cars have to go to mechanics on a regular basis, right?  There's this wonderful thing called servicing one's car.  It's where you have the oil and any other necessary fluids changed, you get the items that wear (e.g. tires, brake pads, etc.) inspected, and a host of other things looked over.  Of course, most of these things can be done yourself, but most people don't know how.  As a result, cars are taken to mechanics regularly, a process that's better known as maintenance.  Magic, I know.  Your mechanic seeing lots of Z3s or Z4s doesn't mean anything.