Showing posts with label Thomas Sowell. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Thomas Sowell. Show all posts

Saturday, August 18, 2012

“We’re number one!” and other fallacies

Just as there are five Olympic rings, there were five big winners in the London 2012 Olympics medal race:

United States - 104 medals (46 gold, 29 silver, 29 bronze)
China - 87 medals (38 gold, 27 silver, 22 bronze)
Russia - 82 medals (24 gold, 25 silver, 33 bronze)
Great Britain - 65 medals (29 gold, 17 silver, 19 bronze)
Germany - 44 medals (11 gold, 19 silver, 14 bronze)

Obviously, we (collectively) are the best!

Really?

Ya think?

If you consider gold medals only, the list is slightly different:

United States - 46
China - 38
Great Britain - 29
Russia - 24
Korea - 13

Again, we (collectively) are the best!

But for a completely different (and perhaps more accurate) perspective on the London 2012 Olympics, maybe we should consider this chart showing medals per capita.

Moving right along to the subject of taxation, with or without representation, consider this statement by Thomas Sowell:


<b>English Is Strange (example #17,643) and a new era begins</b>

Through, cough, though, rough, bough, and hiccough do not rhyme, but pony and bologna do. Do not tell me about hiccup and baloney. ...