I recently referred to a bit of innumeracy in a Hendrik Hertzberg politcal column and challenged readers to spot it. Since my mailbox has not been overflowing with responses from my thousands of alert readers, it is time to reveal the solution myself.
Hertzberg himself directed attention to the error on his blog, which is how I came to know about it. He wrote in the March 9 issue of The New Yorker that a 140 million dollar federal outlay for monitoring volcanoes, mocked by Louisiana's Governor Bobby Jindal in his lame response to the President's televised speech to a joint session of Congress, amounted to just 0.0002 percent of the total stimulus package. Actually, it is 0.0002 ("two-ten thousandths") of the total package, which is 0.02 percent.
I've noticed people have a hard time with the concept of percent. Maybe they just have a hard time figuring with numbers but the examples of innumeracy that cross my line of sight frequently have to do with percent problems. For example, a friend, by no means dumb, charged with overseeing the United Way drive at her office, calls to ask how to determine whether someone's pledge is at least ten percent more than what they gave last year (in which case they get a prize). I launch into an explanation and she interrupts, "Just tell me what buttons to push."
Hertzberg's error is rather common. People understand (I think) that "percent" signifies "what part of a hundred" and would have no trouble telling you that 8 is 20% of 40. But when the "part of a hundred" is somewhat more than 100 or somewhat less than 1, it's harder to think straight about it. In fact I think it is a little disreputable to speak of percent in certain cases. It seems like, instead of telling the truth, you are going for a "Wow!" with "a 100% increase" (sounds like it increased a hundredfold when it only doubled) or "one-tenth of one percent" (which may sound more impressively small than "a thousandth").
Of course you can achieve even more wonderful effects if you are willing to dispense altogether with the truth of the matter. The New Yorker recently ran an essay--abstract only, the whole thing is behind a subscriber wall--by John McPhee concerning the Olympian efforts of fact checkers who, before an article can appear in print, verify every statement of fact, no matter how trivial or tangential to the subject at hand. So I guess first Hertzberg and then Homer nodded. My own theory of the case is that those toiling as fact checkers for The New Yorker are probably "literary types" and numbers are not their strength.
But it is indeed odd, as Hertzberg says, that the Governor of Louisiana should be the one to go on TV to complain, on behalf of the Republican party, that President Obama appears too interested in preparing for natural disasters.
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