The main thing is the little black lines – the “confidence interval” – a statistical measure of uncertainty that can be used when showing the average value of data from a survey (or other type of research).

And what this means, which I have confirmed with the ABS, is that the reading rates are statistically the same for males and females within all generations with the exception of gen X.

Is this correct? I haven’t studied statistics since high school so I am completely clueless, but it doesn’t make sense based on my rudimentary understanding of what a confidence interval is supposed to do. The confidence intervals overlap, but they are not identical. Doesn’t that mean that reading rates could be statistically the same, but not that they are statistically the same?

Anyway, I also found it interesting that men read more magazines than women now too, considering it was historically the other way around and that many men actually believed its existence as a societal norm was an example of their superior rational minds.