Wednesday, August 15, 2012

Taking Leave of Our Census


According to the Census Bureau’s population clock, the U.S. population on Tuesday hit 314,159,265 which is pi times 10 to the eighth, rounded to the nearest whole number.

Pseudo-math geeks are all high-fiving and ordering more pie, but REAL math geeks humbly point out that Census Bureau data is merely an estimate with known margins of errors.

In fact the admitted error rate in Census bureau data means that we only know one thing for sure -- the first digit in that number is right. All the others are suspect.

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