Monday, February 23

Fuzzy Math

Head of the MLB Player's Association, Donald Fehr has spoken up about the assertion that all baseball players are now considered guilty,

"If that's the judgment, it seems to me that is entirely wrong," Fehr said Monday. "We know what happened in 2003. The number of positives we had was slightly over 5 percent. That means that slightly over 94 percent was negative." (AP)

Fehr's stance is not surprising, but his math could use some work. For some as intelligent as Fehr, this seems more calculated rather than a failure at doing math in public. Here's the problem (haha, math... problem...), 104 players tested positive. Each of the 30 teams has a forty man roster that it takes to spring training where the tests took place. 30 times 40 = 1200 and 104/1200 = 8.667%. This may seem like splitting hairs, but Fehr tries to assert that just over 1/20th of the baseball players were using steroids, when in fact, it's closer to 1 in 10. Fehr's as shrewd as they come, and this was merely an attempt to dupe folks that are the product of a lazy society, figuring what's the difference. He had to know that sum... oh man, I can't stop.

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