Santa Paula, CA— A group of statistics students at Thomas Aquinas College have discovered that people who use a multiple in a sentence when they should be using a percentage are fourteen times less likely to understand what math actually is than the average person.

“We just really got sick of hearing people say things like, ‘X times less likely’ when they should be saying ‘X percent less likely’. We hear stupid stuff like that all the time, mostly from journalists,” said Professor Holden Bath, head of the economics school.

In their study, the students asked one simple grammar question, followed by 100 simple arithmetic questions and a final question about the test-taker’s career. Those who answered the grammar question correctly averaged a math score of 92.7% while those who answered it incorrectly averaged a math score of just 6.4%. Of those who scored poorly on the math portion of the test, 97% were journalists.

Mr. Bath stated, “So what we found is that if you use a multiple to convey a percentage, you are less likely to be good at arithmetic, and you are likely to be someone who works in the media.”