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Math-loving Elitists
So Josh has weighed in on the decimalistas that have dared point out that Hillary didn’t get the “double-digit victory” that she not only claimed, by had awarded to her by most media outlets.
The boards (both here and on other sites) are chock-full of cross fire between those who insist that the subtraction of decimal numbers be correctly performed, and the Clinton supporters who complain about Obama-camp whiners.
Only in a math-challenged America could a 54.6% to 45.4% spread be rounded to 55-45 before the subtraction to produce a 10% spread. And that the news shows were doing this there’s no doubt…the percentages posted on the crawl last night bounced back and forth from 6% to 8% to 10%, with nary an odd number in sight.
If Hillary stood at 54.4%, would the cable news shows rounded down, such that a 0.2% difference produced an illusionary 2% shift? Probably. But I can’t help but think that Chris Matthews and all the rest would rather it be 10%, just to be able to use “double-digit” to express the spread a different way.
And the real rub? Complaining about the fuzzy math is fruitless, and probably counterproductive. After all, only the well-educated elite would care about decimals and significant figures, right?
Guess we can “math-loving” to the list of hyphenated pejoratives applied to the “typical” Obama backer. But where should it be placed? Before “latte-slurping,” or after?











Comments (3)
Yep. Just like our silly insistance that she's now in worse shape in the delegate race than she was before Pennsylvania.
April 23, 2008 4:47 PM | Reply | Permalink
I don't know, visually I see 2 digits in 9.2. :)
April 23, 2008 5:34 PM | Reply | Permalink
I just don't understand the whole discussion. It seems to me to be really silly and a waste of bandwidth.
April 23, 2008 6:09 PM | Reply | Permalink
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