Don't Let Kent Kaiser Count Us!

In his op-ed in today's Star Tribune, where he tried to muddy the waters about Michele Bachmann's anti-Census rant, Kent Kaiser made a doozy of a math error, and no one on the Strib staff caught it.

After detailing how Minnesota is supposedly prone to being over-counted because of snowbirds, students and tribal members who live in the Twin Cities, he wrote:

Indeed, the Census Bureau estimated that in 2000 Minnesota was overcounted by 1.7 percent (more than 8,000 people), the highest overcount in the country.

I've got news for Kent -- it's either 1.7 percent or it's 8,000 people, but not both, since there are over 5 million people in Minnesota. So if it's 1.7 percent, it's 80,000 people, and if it's 8,000 people, it's only .17 percent.

Which is it, Kent? And why couldn't the Strib editors (if there are any left at this point) catch such an obvious example of innumeracy?