On Using Consistent Units

Although the media have been getting better in dealing with numbers, the statistician in me sometimes recoils at such reports. An example is in today’s NY Times op-ed piece on Vietnam, in which the author writes that now is “an appropriate time to honor the suffering and the sacrifice of all those who served, including the 58,000 American service members, the estimated 1.3 million North and South Vietnamese fighters and the two million civilians who were killed during the conflict.”

I’m sure that it follows strict Times guidelines as to how to report numbers, but it gives one a visual impression that is akin to the quote apocryphally attributed to Stalin: “the death of one person is a tragedy; the death of one million is a statistic.” I would think that a better way to report this would be to write of “the 58,000 American service members, the estimated 1,300,000 North and South Vietnamese fighters and the 2,000,000 civilians who were killed during the conflict.” It provides a more accurate indication of the extent of the tragic consequences of the Vietnam war.