9 Responses to “Innumeracy Watch”

1. 1 1 Jonathan Kariv
   August 31, 2015 at 3:05 am

   I’m not sure if it’s entirely obvious that we can just ad the weight of the cyst to get her pre-operation weight. Maybe some other stuff comes out with the cyst? Sure someone who actually knows about cysts (not me) can fill in the blanks there.

2. 2 2 jgreene39
   August 31, 2015 at 9:01 am

   I think Jonathan has the right answer here. It’s likely a little more complicated than simply adding the weight of the cyst, though we very likely can get pretty close.

3. 3 3 nobody.really
   August 31, 2015 at 11:49 am

   I seem to recall a diet story with before-and-after photos of a woman taken from behind, with her looking over her shoulder at the camera. The photo caption read “Woman loses 50 lbs – a third of her left behind!” And indeed her posterior had shrunk, but in a rather more symmetrical way than the caption suggested.

4. 4 4 Khodge
   August 31, 2015 at 12:48 pm

   The only way, I’m guessing, to get such precision would be by weighing the tumor separately. The reporter would have done a better job by not commenting on the fact that he did not have a before baseline.

5. 5 5 Roger
   August 31, 2015 at 1:55 pm

   Maybe Stanford thought that it would be a HIPAA violation to reveal the previous weight. Or maybe Stanford did not say because it was obvious, and the reporter never asked.

6. 6 6 Trent McBride
   August 31, 2015 at 2:51 pm

   When excessively large tumors are removed, it can cause fluid shifts between body compartments. One of those compartments being the vascular system, which can release fluid via the kidneys – thus, depending on the specifics of fluid movements, the weight loss can be more or less than the size of the tumor.

7. 7 7 Ross Levatter
   August 31, 2015 at 3:34 pm

   Although I agree with Trent and Jonathan above, I have to question the entire claim of innumeracy. The reporter simply says “Officials at Stanford did not say how much she weighed before surgery.” That’s NOT the same as “…Stanford was unable to determine how much she weighed before surgery” or “…Stanford thinks it’s impossible for you to determine from released information how much she weighed before surgery.” Most likely Stanford physicians either didn’t bother to mention, or fully realized it would be redundant to mention, her pre-surgical weight. Maybe we’re simply dealing with a lazy reporter.

8. 8 8 Thots Official
   September 6, 2015 at 12:27 am

   The arithmetic was not the first thing that caught my attention. My first reaction was:

   DAYUUUUUUMMMM THAT IS A BIG CYST!!!!!!!!!!!!

9. 9 9 nivedita
   September 7, 2015 at 11:08 am

   Right, perhaps the officials assumed that the rest of us did not fail first-grade arithmetic, and hence there was no point belaboring the obvious.