Numerical Qualifiers #2: Be Careful, President Carter

President Carter recently announced to what he surely knew would be an impending firestorm of public outrage that  ”I think an overwhelming portion of the intensely demonstrated animosity toward President Barack Obama is based on the fact that he is a black man.”

Yikes. How in the world would one get the numbers to make a claim like that one?

If only he had not said “overwhelming portion” his claim, it seems to me would have been defensible. The magnitude of qualifiers matters big time in terms of the quality of an argument. His reasoning that he had lived in the South and seen the ugliness of racism gives him no special vantage point for making a numerical assessment of that degree. On the other hand, had he said “some not insignificant portion”, I , at least would have found it impossible to gainsay his conclusion.

Most journalists who responded, in my hearing anyway, engaged in blindness to frequency modifiers that was even more egregious.  Again and again they derided President Carter for having said what he never said, viz., “He should know that many people just do not like the policies of the President.”

I somehow believe that President Carter is well aware of that piece of  ”wisdom” that journalist after journalist sanctimoniously repeated as if President Carter were a naughty schoolboy. Notice the license here with respect to numerical qualifiers.  Apparently, they had no awareness that there is nothing logically improbable about “overwhelming portion” and “many people” sharing this argumentative bed. They were vigorously pushing the argument that may never have needed to exist. And, oh, the smugness of the delivery!