Percentages Are Hard

According to WebMD, 31% of men and 65% of women wash their hands after using the bathroom. We’d love to see those numbers closer to 100%, but that’s for another discussion. However, if you add the two numbers together, you get 96%, meaning that we’re getting closer to the 100% mark we’re looking for, right?

Actually, it doesn’t work that way. The 31% refers to the proportion of men who were surveyed who wash their hands, and the 65% is for the proportion of women who were surveyed. You can’t just add percentages to each other whenever you want, LBT™ “good stuff.”