‘Denominator Neglect’ Rules in Bob Rae Attack Ad
‘Denominator neglect’ rules in Bob Rae attack ad In the recent Conservative Party attack ad concerning Bob Rae, the ad shows a ‘Welcome to Ontario’ sign with a typewriter animation revealing ‘1,200,000 welfare population’ scrawling on the sign. The audio in the background intones in a jovial mocking tone that “Premier Rae turned Ontario into the Welfare Capital of Canada”. This is yet another claim in a long line of examples of ‘numerator’ politics. This is where you have a numerator and no denominator; a factual number without a context. In Thinking Fast and Slow, Daniel Kahneman calls peoples inclination to make foolish choices ‘denominator neglect’. Rob Ford does it with the number of city employees. The 53,000 which he considers way too many is a numerator, a factual number.…