The Senseless Census: A Solution By Jon N. Hall May 26, 2010 The original purpose of the census was apportionment -- the drawing of congressional districts so that each would contain roughly the same number of Americans. To do this, the census must count heads and get their addresses. This has not been a mystery since the advent of computers. Computers are used in statistical sampling. Jordan Ellenberg, a professor of mathematics at UW-Madison, made an impassioned plea for using sampling in the census on May 1 in The Washington Post . It was titled: “The census will be wrong. We could fix it.” But in Department of Commerce v. United States House of Representatives (1999), the Supreme Court ruled against the use of sampling in the census. Justice O’Connor delivered the Court’s opinion : “The District Court below examined the plain text and legislative history of the [Census] Act and concluded that the proposed use of statistical sampling to determine population for ...
Popular posts from this blog
Nonsense ‘Carries Through’ the Anglophonic World By Jon N. Hall Before native speakers of the English language try to master the split infinitive, the passive voice, or the mysteries of the subjunctive mood, they might learn how to use conjunctions. Many Anglophones, even the highly educated, often don’t know which conjunction to use. One of the main reasons for this sad state of affairs is that for nearly a century, language experts, the guardians of our mother tongue, have been promoting a few bad ideas. I’m here to help. The rules of English language usage shouldn’t just codify the usage and logic of casual conversation. But that seems to be the case in a rule propounded by none other than Bryan A. Garner, usage expert par excellence . In my copy of the 2003 edition of the celebrated Garner’s Modern American Usage , all that one finds in the entry for the conjunction “or” is this: “See and/or. ” Garner’s entry for “and/or” is sound. Where we find the unfortunate rule for...
So You Think You Understand Language By Jon N. Hall The mathematician John von Neumann once said: “Young man, in mathematics you don't understand things. You just get used to them.” The same sort of thing might also be said about language -- you don't understand language, you just get used to it. But with language, it may be even more the case than with mathematics. That’s because folks often have to invert the true meanings of words in order to grasp what they’re hearing, i.e. what’s intended. When one thinks about it for a bit, language itself can seem rather mystifying -- better to just use it, right? Not if one is trying to be exact. It is for the sake of exactness and precision that we create “usage rules.” But we Anglophones need better usage rules for some of the most common words in English: conjunctions. Conjunctions can create ambiguity , and in some arenas of contemporary life, like law, ambiguity can’t be tolerated. Sad to say, but w...
Comments
Post a Comment