Another one some of my friends complain about is: {US Citizens} + {Empty} = {Americans}, (https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/American) and it is so wrong that |Empty| > |US Citizens|, despite the definition |Empty| = 0. --Brad On Fri, Sep 4, 2020 at 10:28 AM Brad Klee <bradklee@gmail.com> wrote:
False: |Republicans| + |Democrats| = |Voters|.
Pragmatically, the missing set:
{Voters}/{Republicans}U{Democrats}
usually gets dropped somehow, and when it does, elections are won or lost. Another example is
|Voters| + |Nonvoters| = |Population|
This is what I would call poor-logic, and it's easy to break. What about the disenfranchised?
Clearly {Nonvoters} includes {Disenfranchised-T}, but {Voters} does not include {Disenfranchised-F}! Again, elections can be won or lost on this logic.
None of this is ever said by politicians, but as far as I can see, it's implicit to what they are doing, especially with United States of America, right now.
--Brad
On Fri, Sep 4, 2020 at 9:55 AM James Propp <jamespropp@gmail.com> wrote:
Does anyone know of any widely-promulgated bogus assertions of the form “The cardinality of set A plus the cardinality of set B equals the cardinality of set C” (where the C is something like the union of A and B) that sounds convincing until you step back and realize either (a) there are elements of C that are elements of neither A nor B, or (b) there are elements of C that are elements of both A and B?
Here I’m talking about flimflam at the interface between math and culture (not mistakes made by mathematicians in a mathematical context); e.g., fallacious stuff said by public figures.
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