The experts say Greece has been the victim of a statistical cruelty: a revision of the data showed that Greece's debt and deficit were worse than previously thought, so it has a steeper climb to recovery.

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This was in contrast to the disappointing new home sales as there was a the large downward revision of the September sales data.

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"The first version of the data only incorporates 25% of the data collected, and 75% of the time the revision goes down instead of up, " he said.

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The revision of the figures is mainly a result of better data-collection methods, particularly in India (which accounts for half the downward revision) and five African countries (which account for another fifth).

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Analysts were primed for an unchanged reading for industrial production throughout April and of course were shocked by a slide of 1.7% and thanks to a regressive revision to earlier reported data the year-on-year pace of output now stands lower by 1.2%.

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And just to go back to what Jake was talking about and this revision, are you talking about historical data that talks about the job losses during the course of this recession or something relative to the January numbers?

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