2006 Community Profiles

Why don't the numbers add up?

Occasionally, the data presented for a community appear to have addition errors either for a single line of data in the statistical profile or for the total displayed for a 'set' of data such as 'Total population 15 years and over'. The example below provides 'Common-law status characteristics' for the 'Total population 15 years and over'.

In both cases, this is due to a procedure that Statistics Canada applies to census data, which is intended to protect the confidentiality of Canadians.

For example, the data as initially tabulated for a community may have been:

Common-law status characteristics	Community
	Total	Male	Female
Total population 15 years and over	156	67	89
Not in a common-law relationship	9	7	2

For the 2006 Census, a confidentiality procedure is applied using a random rounding process to alter the values reported for individual cells. Counts greater than 10 are rounded up or down to a multiple of 5. Counts less than 10 are rounded to either a 0 or a 10.

Once tabulated, the individual values are rounded. In this example, the 'Total population 15 years and over' category can be rounded to either 155 or 160. The values reported for 'Male' could be rounded to either 65 or 70 and 'Female' could be rounded to either 85 or 90.

Similarly, random rounding affects all the values for the various categories of 'Common-law status characteristics' for the 'Total population 15 years and over'.

After the random rounding process, the table could appear as:

Common-law status characteristics	Community
	Total	Male	Female
Total population 15 years and over	155	65	85
Not in a common-law relationship	0	0	10

For more information, see Confidentiality and random rounding.

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