>>>>>>>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 don't see the words 'average smoker' anywhere in the article. I see 'average resident', 'packs sold per person' and 'per-capita packs bought'. As before : if they meant 'per smoker' then say so and also provide the percentage of residents who smoke in the state. Otherwise the entire analysis is worthless.
Anyway I've no views about this other then the lousy way the article is written so ..... :-}

>
>>
>>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 :-}