When the piece ran 14 months ago, people read my report in context. Many sent me emails, letters and voicemails. The piece ran in newspapers across the country that subscribe to The New York Times News Service.
These readers expressed a wide variety of insights and reactions, none of them like the ones here from people who read a single number out of context and then made assertions about my knowledge, ethics, etc. Some here assert that I used some strained methodology when all I did was multiply and divide.
Your response is nothing more than an Appeal to Popularity, and thus a logical fallacy. I really don’t care at all how many other people liked or didn’t like your article.
And your repeated attempts for us to look at the numbers “in context” is bound to fall on deaf ears. We weren’t the ones who originally took your number out of context, it was the LA Times, when they wrote “Domestic Tranquility”.
I would think a simple comment to the effect that the number you came up with “needed context” would be in order.
Although I’m really not sure what that “context” would be.
