Well, after looking at LL's own stats, the numbers they're reporting do seem to jibe: http://secondlife.com/whatis/economy_stats.php

The page in question does seem to state that they lost 24562 simulators, however, that figure is exactly the number of simulators owned at the end of November, and the month-to-date figure for December is zero, which makes me think that the number of simulators added or lost is calculated simply by subtracting the last month from the previous month... which leads to unhelpful results until the stats actually update. If I'm guessing right, then LL probably should consider changing the note about the simulators added being "month to date" if the figures aren't some flavor of "live". Footnote 3 (in fine print) makes me think that they're aware of this issue and have encountered it before. Rather than putting fine print in telling us not to believe what we read, they should really consider simply not publishing figures until they're accurate -- perception is all too often mistaken for reality.