I was reading an article on one of the other blogs as written by an economist. In his article he discussed the 0.18% of total expenditures on one category. Then the blogger went on to describe the total expenditure as not being “18%, but rather a little less than one-fifth of 1 percent.” I asked the economist about the why of the additional explanation and whether this would be a legitimate fear that people might mistake 0.18% as being 18% and not less than 2 tenths of 1%. The answer was “yes,” he did not want the total expenditures in this category to be mistook as 18% as it was important. He went to greater length to explain it. He had experienced errors by others in misinterpreting a portion of a 1 percent as something greater than 1%.
Topics:
run75441 considers the following as important: Journalism, run75441
This could be interesting, too:
Angry Bear writes A Bit of History by a Friend from Slate’s “The Fray”
Angry Bear writes Western “Values”
Bill Haskell writes Commercial or Charter Flights to BBall Games
Eric Kramer writes Ukraine, Israel, and Biden: lessons and questions
I was reading an article on one of the other blogs as written by an economist. In his article he discussed the 0.18% of total expenditures on one category. Then the blogger went on to describe the total expenditure as not being “18%, but rather a little less than one-fifth of 1 percent.” I asked the economist about the why of the additional explanation and whether this would be a legitimate fear that people might mistake 0.18% as being 18% and not less than 2 tenths of 1%. The answer was “yes,” he did not want the total expenditures in this category to be mistook as 18% as it was important. He went to greater length to explain it. He had experienced errors by others in misinterpreting a portion of a 1 percent as something greater than 1%.
Have you experienced the same innumeracy amongst others?