Re: Results of Poll by Email No. 18

Quoting Tim May <butsuri@...>:

Christophe slabronten:
> > Quite interesting! The Northern Americans are in majority, but it's only
> > a relative majority, and not that much more than the Western Europeans.
> > And the Non-Northern-American Non-Western-European minority is quite a
> > strong minority with 21%! So contrary to what this Ms. Gunn claimed, and
> > like I had already said, the geographical representation of the list has
> > more to do with the accessibility of Internet to people in different
> > places of the world rather than a cultural restriction of conlanging.
>
> Generally speaking, it's my understanding that the word majority
> refers by default to an absolute majority only, so if the NAmericans
> have only a relative majority, they don't have a majority at all, [snip]
Correct. In American political usage at least, Presidents must win
a majority of the Electoral College, but they need only win a plurality
of the popular vote.  This political usage usually carries over into
other usages as well.

(I am reminded by an article in _The Guardian_, on one of their trashier
and more biased days, when they tried to assert that 51% was a "clear
majority" in opinion polling -- obviously false, since virtually no
opinion polls have margins of error less than 1%.)

=====================================================================
Thomas Wier          "...koruphàs hetéras hetére:isi prosápto:n /
Dept. of Linguistics  mú:tho:n mè: teléein atrapòn mían..."
University of Chicago "To join together diverse peaks of thought /
1010 E. 59th Street   and not complete one road that has no turn"
Chicago, IL 60637     Empedocles, _On Nature_, on speculative thinkers

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