Back in my car, listening once again to my beloved jazz station with hourly NPR news interruptions, I hear this bit.


I don't want to get all Bill Walsh here, but it cranks my shaft when reporters (and worse, editors) get simple math wrong. If I had to be there in the math class in fourth grade when we talked about decimal places, so did they. Let's use it, shall we?

One-tenth of a percent is not the smallest increase possible. The smallest possible positive number is one over infinity. Since we're talking about sales, though, let's just go ahead and allow that the smallest possible measurable increase is one cent. Being as the piece was about business expenses nationwide (or worldwide, or it could have just been corporate spending, I wasn't paying that much attention), I rather doubt those numbers are the same.

If you're going to talk about numbers, do it in a way that doesn't make you sound like a lazy third-grader slapping a report together during recess right before it's due. And if you say "that's what copy editors are for," well, you're half right -- the editor is supposed to be trained to catch nonsense like this, but if you didn't write it in the first place we'd like you better.

This is why I give the smallest credence possible to broadcast news. NPR, though -- I thought you were different.