>>>>>>http://health.msn.com/health-topics/articlepage.aspx?cp-documentid=100220496>1=31020#
>>>>>
>>>>>What sort of logic is this?
>>>>>If you live in a state where more people smoke you will save more by stopping?
>>>>>If you stop smoking you will save the cost of the cigarettes you would have bought. That's not going to vary depending on how many other smokers you are surrounded by.
>>>>
>>>>It's averages. All they're saying is that if you are an average smoker in Delaware, then you spend more on cigarettes than an average smoker in some other state.
>>>
>>>They are saying that but how is that arrived at from the given facts?
>>>Given an 'average spend per-capita' how do we know whether that is because more people smoke or because those that do smoke smoke more?
>>
>>I would assume that per-capita means taking the total amount spent and dividing by the number of smokers (or even by the population)
>
>Per capita usually means 'per head of population' - if they meant 'per smoker' than why didn't that just say so. And if it's per-head of population then there's a big difference in savings to an individual smoker if, say, everyone in the state smokes one a day or 1% of the population smokes 100 a day each.

Ah, but of course, they aren't talking about 'individual smokers' and I think that when you find that 'average smoker' they are talking about, you'll find he/she saves exactly the amount they predicted. ;)

>
>I'm pretty sure they did it using one of those can't miss polls that are correct to within 3%, 97% of the time.
>>
>>While I'm at it, I should point out that, imho, the whole exercise is unusually pointless, and I can't for the life of me, figure out why anybody thought this was newsworthy enough to print it. How it actually helps anybody is beyond my ken.
>
>I guess that's what I was thinking when I made my original post :-}