Over Three Posts Posted.

I was playing Guitar Hero the other day, and I noticed that the back of the case advertises "Over 55 Rockin' Tracks." I hate that little trick of words. It's not only Guitar Hero; plenty of other ads and even news reports do this "Over 20 wounded . . ." What is the point? Do they think we can't handle a number like 56 or 57?

"57!? What the hell is 57, and what relation could it possibly have to 55?"

There is no reason to do this. It makes your sentence longer than it needs to be (by adding the word 'over'), it makes it conceptually more complex (by adding the concept 'over'). The only explanation I can think of is that it is supposed to make it seem like a bigger number.

"Over 55? Holy shit, there could be 500 songs in this game!"

But that is stupid too. Anyone who is not an idiot knows that 'over 55' means between 55 and 60. If it were over 60, they would have written that. And the fact that they need to use this stupid little trick probably means that it is actually 56. And think about it: they are trying to make a number seem bigger by replacing it with a smaller number! How is that supposed to work?

All you are doing is making your statistics less accurate and stupider.

The only acceptable use of 'over' is when dealing with numbers over a million (or I guess ten thousand depending on your target audience). Still, 3 significant digits should be required. And please, none of that 'thousand million' bullshit.

But I digress. Please never do this with numbers.