"My feeling is that it was not unreasonable for Knight-Ridder to say that we had to get our profit margins up in the double digits," Mr. King said yesterday, noting that The Inquirer's margins were well below 10 percent in an industry averaging closer to 15 percent rate of return.

At the time of the acquisition, services accounted for 45 percent of Digital's revenues (about $6 billion) and their gross margins on services averaged 34 percent, considerably higher than Compaq's 25% margins on PC sales and also satisfying customers who had demanded more services from Compaq for years.

Nearly every game of their winning streak has been a blowout as the Nets' margin of victory has averaged 17.4 points.

Miami's stunningly easy victory was the fourth blowout in the B.C.S. this season - the margin of victory averaged 22.7 points - leading to lower ratings for each of the games.

For the past three seasons, the leaguewide margin has averaged 11.8.

The association said that the margin of error in its report has averaged four-tenths of 1 percent in the last five years.

In the Midwest, where a pipeline break and a shortage of new reformulated gas caused the worst spike in retail prices, margins averaged $9.45 a barrel for the period - topping $17 at one point - compared with $3.18 the year before.

But operating margins among the smallest companies - those in the fourth and fifth quintiles in market cap - averaged 9.3 percent and 5.4 percent, respectively.

Deborah T. Bronsten, the senior textile and apparel analyst at Prudential Securities, said the company's gross margins averaged about 40 percent of sales for the last two years, compared with competitors' average of 33 percent.

With margins for facilities in one of the top ten chains averaging about 19 percent, while margins for other facilities average about 7 percent.