posted
If I were to use the phrase: "...most people...", or "...the majority of people..." or perhaps even some percentage that fell below 100% that indicates that though you are more likely to find whatever I'm describing than not; there must be some examples of that not being the case. For instance, if I were to say: "Most professors are on the liberal end of the political spectrum", this is not effectively countered by a statement such as: "That's not true, I knew a professor once who kept trying to get me to join the Libertarian party." You see, the word 'most', like the word 'majority', indicates only one thing about the percentage: it's over 50. It does not mean 100%. If I wanted to give an absolute then I might use words like 'all', 'every', or even go right to the horse’s mouth and say 'one hundred percent'.
quote:Table 4. Likelihood Scale. Terminology Likelihood of the occurrence/outcome Virtually certain: > 99% probability Very likely: > 90% probability Likely: > 66% probability About as likely as not: 33 to 66% probability Unlikely: < 33% probability Very unlikely: < 10% probability Exceptionally unlikely: < 1% probability
I propose:
all = 100% most = > 75% more than half = 50 - 75% less than half = 25 - 50% a few = < 25% none = 0%
ETA: 50 - 75% really isn't less than half
Posts: 1711 | Registered: Jun 2004
| IP: Logged |
posted
Sounds like someone's been experiencing the super happy-fun-time experience of using data and watching people try to contradict it with anecdote!
Posts: 15421 | Registered: Aug 2005
| IP: Logged |
posted
Personally, I use "most" as just > 50% rather than > 75%.
On the other hand, "few" can be rather fuzzily-defined. I'm not unsympathetic to wanting to define few as < 25% but I would note it would lead to sentences that may cause double-takes such as "there are few black people in the United States" or "there are few Muslims on Earth" and the like.
Posts: 7593 | Registered: Sep 2006
| IP: Logged |
posted
I think the IPCC was trying to find terms and phrases, and define them in such away, that these double-takes wouldn't happen. There was ambiguity in the definitions for the first reports, and that caused confusion and problems. By defining them like this, there should be less confusion.
And if the definition of few was well known to be less than 25%, then there wouldn't be double-takes.
Posts: 1711 | Registered: Jun 2004
| IP: Logged |
posted
Yes, and because everybody checks the IPCC reports along with the news and high-ranked political journals (as opposed to, say, youtube or myspace) this will be around in no time!
Printer-friendly view of this topic
![[Smile]](smile.gif)
