Three-quarters is more than one-half.
Mar. 26th, 2008 11:36 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kageotogiI spent a few minutes last night taking advantage of my Stumble-bar, and came across this article about a book club for homeless men. Oddly, the thing that really stood out for me in this article was not the actual content -- it was the statistic.
According to a recent survey, out of every four Americans hasn't read a single book in the last year – yes, Harry Potter included.
Warning: do not read the rest if you ever want to think of me as a non-procrastinator ever again, and only if you're interested in my tumultuous free association!
I read and re-read that quote several times. Even excusing the missing word (I correctly assumed they meant "one out of four"), that couldn't be right, could it? According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the population of the United States of America stands somewhere around 303,713,341. If the above quote is correct, that means 75,928,335.25 people did not read a book in the past year.
The .25 would represent the people who read part of a book, I guess. For the sake of my math, I'm going to round it up -- we'll say 75,928,336 did not read a book this past year.
According to this CIA publication, 99% of Americans are literate -- in other words, 99% of the population over the age of fifteen can read and write. Now, while the 300 million isn't made up entirely of people over the age of fifteen, we're going to stand by that number for the time being (however, if someone can find me an estimate of the US population over the age of fifteen, please do!). 99% of 303,713,341 is 300,676,207.59. We'll assume the .59 represents people who can sort of read, and we'll round it up to 300,676,208.
Okay. This means that out of the 300,676,208 literate people in the United States, 75,928,336 didn't read a book in the past year. It also means that 224,747,872 literate people did read a book. In any case, the math so far is working out: 75,928,336 is a little over 25% of 300,676,208 -- one-fourth.
I don't know about you, but I'm not liking these numbers. 75 million (almost 76 million!) may not seem like a lot compared to the 224 million readers, but it's enough to make me pause. 75 million. That's more than the population of any single state. No, seriously. That's more than twice the population of California (36,553,215, if you're curious. Twice that would be 73,106,430).
Now let's look back at the original article. Their quote doesn't list a source -- it just cites "a recent survey". So where did this survey come from?
A quick Google Search presented 118,000 results (keep in mind, I didn't ask for an exact quote, but I did Google the whole thing -- including the words "Harry Potter", as they were in the original). 118,000! I'm not going to sift through all those results, but I will go through the first few pages.
I'm in luck. Third down on the first page is this article from NPR, posted in November, 2007. The first bit isn't very helpful -- it mentions another survey that found reading proficiency has gone down (colour me surprised). Scrolling down, however, the follow up ("Why Women Read More Than Men") cites the original survey:
A poll released last month by The Associated Press and Ipsos, a market-research firm, found that the typical American read only four books last year, and one in four adults read no books at all.
Okay, so this is a start. Associated Press and Ipsos. I went to the AP site and did a search for Ipsos, which gave me 1,380 results -- a little better than the 118,000 from Google. I narrowed down the search a little more by Googling "Ipsos+one in four", and came up with 314,000 -- more than before.
Ah, well. At lease these are more focused.
The first entry is this article from USA Today, which is the first of the articles thus far to really talk about the poll rather than just reference it. It talks about the whys, the hows, and the whos -- and it's interesting, but not exactly what I'm looking for. Let's keep looking.
Most of the rest of the entires on this page are identical to the USA Today article, or are just reactions to the numbers. However, one thing stands out -- the Ipsos Poll list. Rock. I pull it up and quickly search for the poll (which is here, by the way). This is premium content, though, and I don't want to shell out the money to read it. Damn.
I went back to the search, and found this blog entry, which legitimately cites the survey and goes on to discuss it, comparing it to surveys from previous years. The entry says:
The NEA declared that half of Americans had NOT read a book in 2002. AP/Ipsos declared that one in four Americans had NOT read a book in 2006. All the while, half of Americans DID read a book in 2002, and three quarters of Americans DID read a book in 2006.
I've already spent too much time today looking all this up and can't verify it myself (not having access to the Topline results), but this is good. After all, (in the words of Book Nerd), three-quarters is more than one-half. "All-time low" my ass.
Don't get me wrong. 75,928,336 people not reading is still a huge number, but it's better than it was a few years back. Sounds like a bell curve to me. In any case, now instead of being depressed by the USA's apparent unwillingness to exercise literacy, I'm irritated by all the articles that made a big deal out of the "one-in-four don't read" and didn't point out that the numbers are better than they were just two years before, and annoyed that I wasted time looking all of this up and pinning a doomsday label on the country. Why didn't anyone just say this in the first place and save me all that time?
Jerks.
![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
fish_follower summed it all up for me last night, and I believe he did it well.
Kyle: so you were worried for nothing.
Me: Pretty much.
Kyle: and you would have better off being like me and just not caring in the first place.
Me: ...yeah, I guess.
Kyle: this is why you shouldn't be allowed on the internet.
According to a recent survey, out of every four Americans hasn't read a single book in the last year – yes, Harry Potter included.
Warning: do not read the rest if you ever want to think of me as a non-procrastinator ever again, and only if you're interested in my tumultuous free association!
I read and re-read that quote several times. Even excusing the missing word (I correctly assumed they meant "one out of four"), that couldn't be right, could it? According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the population of the United States of America stands somewhere around 303,713,341. If the above quote is correct, that means 75,928,335.25 people did not read a book in the past year.
The .25 would represent the people who read part of a book, I guess. For the sake of my math, I'm going to round it up -- we'll say 75,928,336 did not read a book this past year.
According to this CIA publication, 99% of Americans are literate -- in other words, 99% of the population over the age of fifteen can read and write. Now, while the 300 million isn't made up entirely of people over the age of fifteen, we're going to stand by that number for the time being (however, if someone can find me an estimate of the US population over the age of fifteen, please do!). 99% of 303,713,341 is 300,676,207.59. We'll assume the .59 represents people who can sort of read, and we'll round it up to 300,676,208.
Okay. This means that out of the 300,676,208 literate people in the United States, 75,928,336 didn't read a book in the past year. It also means that 224,747,872 literate people did read a book. In any case, the math so far is working out: 75,928,336 is a little over 25% of 300,676,208 -- one-fourth.
I don't know about you, but I'm not liking these numbers. 75 million (almost 76 million!) may not seem like a lot compared to the 224 million readers, but it's enough to make me pause. 75 million. That's more than the population of any single state. No, seriously. That's more than twice the population of California (36,553,215, if you're curious. Twice that would be 73,106,430).
Now let's look back at the original article. Their quote doesn't list a source -- it just cites "a recent survey". So where did this survey come from?
A quick Google Search presented 118,000 results (keep in mind, I didn't ask for an exact quote, but I did Google the whole thing -- including the words "Harry Potter", as they were in the original). 118,000! I'm not going to sift through all those results, but I will go through the first few pages.
I'm in luck. Third down on the first page is this article from NPR, posted in November, 2007. The first bit isn't very helpful -- it mentions another survey that found reading proficiency has gone down (colour me surprised). Scrolling down, however, the follow up ("Why Women Read More Than Men") cites the original survey:
A poll released last month by The Associated Press and Ipsos, a market-research firm, found that the typical American read only four books last year, and one in four adults read no books at all.
Okay, so this is a start. Associated Press and Ipsos. I went to the AP site and did a search for Ipsos, which gave me 1,380 results -- a little better than the 118,000 from Google. I narrowed down the search a little more by Googling "Ipsos+one in four", and came up with 314,000 -- more than before.
Ah, well. At lease these are more focused.
The first entry is this article from USA Today, which is the first of the articles thus far to really talk about the poll rather than just reference it. It talks about the whys, the hows, and the whos -- and it's interesting, but not exactly what I'm looking for. Let's keep looking.
Most of the rest of the entires on this page are identical to the USA Today article, or are just reactions to the numbers. However, one thing stands out -- the Ipsos Poll list. Rock. I pull it up and quickly search for the poll (which is here, by the way). This is premium content, though, and I don't want to shell out the money to read it. Damn.
I went back to the search, and found this blog entry, which legitimately cites the survey and goes on to discuss it, comparing it to surveys from previous years. The entry says:
The NEA declared that half of Americans had NOT read a book in 2002. AP/Ipsos declared that one in four Americans had NOT read a book in 2006. All the while, half of Americans DID read a book in 2002, and three quarters of Americans DID read a book in 2006.
I've already spent too much time today looking all this up and can't verify it myself (not having access to the Topline results), but this is good. After all, (in the words of Book Nerd), three-quarters is more than one-half. "All-time low" my ass.
Don't get me wrong. 75,928,336 people not reading is still a huge number, but it's better than it was a few years back. Sounds like a bell curve to me. In any case, now instead of being depressed by the USA's apparent unwillingness to exercise literacy, I'm irritated by all the articles that made a big deal out of the "one-in-four don't read" and didn't point out that the numbers are better than they were just two years before, and annoyed that I wasted time looking all of this up and pinning a doomsday label on the country. Why didn't anyone just say this in the first place and save me all that time?
Jerks.
fish_follower summed it all up for me last night, and I believe he did it well.Kyle: so you were worried for nothing.
Me: Pretty much.
Kyle: and you would have better off being like me and just not caring in the first place.
Me: ...yeah, I guess.
Kyle: this is why you shouldn't be allowed on the internet.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2008-03-26 07:55 pm (UTC)(I've definitely read more than four books this year so far--although I broke my New Year's resolution of reading twenty minutes a day a looong time ago.)
I'm just amazed you had the patience to do all of that math--and in your free time...o_o.
~*Kelsey*~
no subject
Date: 2008-03-27 01:24 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-03-26 09:33 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-03-27 01:26 pm (UTC)All in all, it could be worse. ♥
no subject
Date: 2008-03-27 12:48 am (UTC)15-64 years: 67.2% (male 100,995,752/female 101,365,035)
65 years and over: 12.6% (male 15,858,477/female 21,991,195) (2007 est.)
CIA Factbook.
also, I think it's cool you went after this.
no subject
Date: 2008-03-27 01:26 pm (UTC)Pfft. It was a huge letdown.
no subject
Date: 2008-03-27 06:00 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-03-30 02:02 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-03-30 02:27 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-03-30 02:51 pm (UTC)