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By JAMES J. KILPATRICK
The Court of Peeves, Irks & Crotchets resumes its summer assizes with a complaint from Billie Ruth Wood of Auburn, Ala. She is irked by the misuse of numbers in the media, and she wants the court to stop it.
Very well. The court says, “Stop it! This minute!”
Alas, it is not so easy. The court has been hobnobbing with newspapermen (and women) for the past 52 years. With a few notable exceptions, we of the press are arithmetical numbskulls. We probably were bom that way.
Ms. Wood buttresses her complaint with a clipping from the Opelika-Auburn News of last October. The story had to do with the Lee County Youth Development Center, which houses far more boys than girls. In fact, “the ratio of girls to boys is probably four to one.”
Well, no. The ratio of girls to boys is probably one to four.
Larry Meyer of Seattle submitted a question to the court two years ago. He asked, “What is an order of magnitude?”
Manifesting its craven cowardice in these matters, the court has held the question in chambers, but it can
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