[ziravan]

Well they made two math mistakes.

1. Decimal point 0.4 instead of 0.04.

0.4% of the U.S. pop in 1990 would be about 1.1 million PEOPLE.

2. They conflated households with people. Which is it: 1.1 million people or 1.1 million households.

In 1990, there were 2.6 persons/household average.

So! Are we talking about 1.1 million ppl, or 2.9 million ppl?

Hard to tell per the article.

[ziravan]

1.1 million Households would be 1.1% of the U.S. pop in 1990, given 2.6 persons per household......

[the_doc]

I would guess that the Census Survey asked whether a given household had indoor toilets. Of course, the Census analysts may have used a multiplier (2.6?) to convert that figure to the (estimated!) number of individuals with no indoor toilets.

What a dumb article. The media is full of dumb people who think they are geniuses. (I intend no disparagement of the thread's author by that comment, BTW.)

[the_doc]

I just found this link: https://www.census.gov/hhes/www/housing/census/historic/sewage.html

When we carefully exam the 1990 tables, it appears that the aggregated U.S. data is saying that 1.1% of American residences did not have tie-ins to public sewers, septic tanks, or cesspools. Using a multiplier of 2.6, we do wind up with 2.9 million Americans without regular indoor toilets in 1990.

That figure was 1.16 percent of the American population--not 0.4% and certainly not 0.04%.

[Red Badger]

Math is not a required subject in journalism school.....................and neither is English grammar, apparently....................