Fastest Growth in America
The government puts out all kinds of information in various reports that are published throughout the year. Some of that information is carefully followed and dissected, such as unemployment numbers and economic reports. Others are completely ignored. But, the best ones are the reports that some reporter sees and concocts a grabbing headline around. Is North Dakota Really the Fastest Growing? The fun with headlines not withstanding, the biggest issue with many news reports about government numbers is that they provide so little context, to a readership that already has such a weak grasp on the math itself. The latest “big news” is that North Dakota has the fastest growing county in the U.S. by population. The key piece of information is that this statistic is not only by population, but also by percentage. For those of you with a firm grasp on the mathematics of statistics, and percentages in general, it comes as no surprise that the biggest percentage gains come the easiest from the lowest starting values. In other words, if you put a turtle in a shopping cart, you can increase his average speed by 1000 percent. If you change the top speed of a race car …