{"id":764,"date":"2020-05-09T08:33:00","date_gmt":"2020-05-09T08:33:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.darylilbury.com\/wordpress\/?p=764"},"modified":"2020-08-07T09:19:36","modified_gmt":"2020-08-07T09:19:36","slug":"how-many-is-many","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.darylilbury.com\/wordpress\/?p=764","title":{"rendered":"How many is ‘many’?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

There\u2019s a nasty little trick being used to argue for ending – and extending – the lockdown.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

How many is \u2018many\u2019? It\u2019s not a silly question, it\u2019s actually quite important, especially now. Over the next few weeks, you\u2019re going to hear arguments for keeping and ending the lockdown. Commentators from both sides of the argument will want to provide authoritative weight to justify their position. They\u2019re also going to suggest statistical significance to that weight.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And that\u2019s where the word will crop up: \u2018many\u2019. Example: \u201cMany scientists are saying that\u2026\u201d or \u201cMany businesses are facing\u2026\u201d. On the face of it, there\u2019s a degree of accuracy to the claims; but if you dig deeper, there\u2019s a flaw. To uncover it, all you need to do is ask, \u201cHow many is \u2018many\u2019?”.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To explain my point: In a room of 100 people, 40 have Samsung mobile phones. Is that \u2018many\u2019? It\u2019s 40%. Is that statistically significant? Given there are dozens of different brands of phones, 40% sounds a sizeable chunk. But what if, of the remaining 60 people, 40 have iPhones? Is that 40% with Samsung phones still \u2018many\u2019.\u00a0As I\u2019ve said elsewhere<\/span><\/a>, \u2018content is king, context is King Kong\u2019.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Let\u2019s dip into science journalism for a second: Research in a town of 100 000 people has found 10 women with acute lymphoblastic leukaemia – a cancer of the blood cells. Is it statistically significant? The answer is yes. Acute lymphoblastic leukaemia is particularly rare – there are only about 800 cases diagnosed in the UK each year – and it usually affects children and older men, especially over the age of 70. Such a figure could therefore suggest an environmental reason for the anomaly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But is that number \u2018many\u2019? I\u2019d argue not.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Back to that same room of 100 people. It is serving a buffet dinner with two options: chicken or vegetarian. Fifty-one choose vegetarian; that\u2019s statistically a \u2018majority\u2019 of people. But is it \u2018many\u2019? It\u2019s only slightly more than half. So then at what point can it be safely argued that \u2018many\u2019 people chose the vegetarian option? Fifty-five? Sixty? Sixty-eight? For argument\u2019s sake, let\u2019s say 68; what if the buffet was presented at a function for nutritionists and the choice by 68 was representative of the eating lifestyle of the population in the room? Is it still significant? Is it still \u2018many\u2019?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What if the buffet was for former rugby players, it offered five choices, and 68 (of the 100) went for the vegetarian option? Is that statistically significant? Would there be safe grounds to say, \u201cMany of those at the Blixton Rugby Club Retirees Dinner chose the vegetarian option\u201d?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Probably; but then statistics would also be available to say, \u201cOf the 100 former rugby players who attended the dinner, 68 chose the vegetarian option in a five-choice meal\u201d That tells a far more compelling story, and, importantly<\/em>, allows the reader to make up their own mind <\/em>as to the statistical significance of beefy former rugby player gobbling up a bowl of eggplant.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If a commentator for, or against, ending lockdown uses the word \u2018many\u2019 to support their argument, then either they have analysed the statistics<\/em> and made a sound value judgement<\/em> of the significance<\/em> of the outcomes, or they\u2019re just assuming as such. If it\u2019s the latter, their invocation of statistical significance is lazy at best, disingenuous at worst.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Whichever it is, they have a cause for challenge; so put them on the spot: \u201cHow many is \u2018many\u2019?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

——–<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Note: The same point argued above is applicable to the word ‘lots’, as in “lots of people believe the lockdown…”, “there are lots of reasons why the lockdown…”, etc. What constitutes ‘lots’? Is 5kg lots of sand? It is if you’re walking around with it in your pockets, not so much if you’re trying to put out a raging oil fire.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Re: the image – okay, perhaps it’s a little harsh, but, admit it, it caught your attention.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There\u2019s a nasty little trick being used to argue for ending – and extending – the lockdown. How many is \u2018many\u2019? It\u2019s not a silly question, it\u2019s actually quite important, especially now. Over the next few weeks, you\u2019re going to hear arguments for keeping and ending the lockdown. Commentators from both sides of the argument…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":765,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[107,19,2,18,21],"tags":[149,153,27,102],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.darylilbury.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/764"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.darylilbury.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.darylilbury.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.darylilbury.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.darylilbury.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=764"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.darylilbury.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/764\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":782,"href":"https:\/\/www.darylilbury.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/764\/revisions\/782"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.darylilbury.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/765"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.darylilbury.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=764"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.darylilbury.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=764"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.darylilbury.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=764"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}