Reading e-books

And something like one in four adults in the U.S. read no books at all in the past year. That stat is from 2007; I wonder how or whether the advent of e-books has changed that.

MJ. Smith said:

Rosie Perera said:

And something like one in four adults in the U.S. read no books at all in the past year

Or three our of four adults did read a book which could be seen as remarkable when you factor in graduation rates, dyslexia, adult illiteracy ...

Yes, three out of four did read a book. I suppose that's somewhat remarkable, but how many of them read only one book in the whole year?

I find the stats on this are all over the map, and not very well documented. On one site I read:

• 45% of all Americans don't read a single book all year
• 12% of professional adults read only one book a year
• Only 4% of people read 1 book a week

On another site I saw "nearly 60 percent of adult
Americans have never read a book and most of the rest read only one book a
year" (source cited: James B. Twitchell, Carnival Culture: The Trashing of Taste in America, New York: University of Columbia Press, 1992, p. 258). I looked up Twitchell's book on Amazon.com and he doesn't say where he got that statistic or what year it's from. He's a professor of English at the University of Florida. Hopefully as an academic publishing through an academic press his information is trustworthy, but these days you never know. Fact-checking in the publishing world seems to be a dying art. (I have no source to cite for that information; it's true; I just feel it in my gut, or maybe I read it on the interwebs... [:)])

alabama24 said:

97% of statistics are wrong half the time...

[:)]

George Somsel said:

alabama24 said:

97% of statistics are wrong half the time...

Only half ?  That is surprising.

EDIT:  Remember -- Figures don't lie, but liars figure.

It figures. Go figure.

alabama24 said:

97% of statistics are wrong half the time...

Generally attributed to Brit PM Benjamin Disraeli and entered into pop culture by the genius of Mark Twain, "There are lies, there are <edit>'ed lies, and there are statistics".  Back in the days when I used to teach practicing engineers, I modified references to statistical information with, "while not statistically significant, trend analysis indicates..."  That simple change eliminated a wasted hour every time we studied a statistic.  Any kind of statistic. Just say the word "statistic" and the scientific calculators began humming in anticipation!