blake murphy wrote:
>
>
> >The original claim was that MOST PEOPLE HAVE TO TRAVEL 300 MILES for a
> >butcher shop. Let's use lots of white space to make this easy.
> >
> >MOST PEOPLE live in the largest population centers, not small towns.
> >Otherwise, the small towns would be large population centers.
> >
> >
> >With me so far?
> >
>
> o.k, if ward did say 'most people' that was foolish.

That is exactly what he said.

> but for dave to
> say there are three within three miles of *him*, implying that same
> must be true for 'most people' is equally foolish. all i was
> originally saying was that i don't think i have three butchers within
> three miles of me, and i live an urban area.

I never implied that my having butcher shops within three miles of my house
in this little town would mean that most people would also have three
within three miles. It only implies that if I have that many that close to
me that it is unlikely that *most people* have to travel 300 miles to find
one. If I were to draw a circle with a hundred mile radius of here, there
would be more than 5 million people included. If I were to reduce it to 20
miles, not an unreasonable distance to drive for good shopping, it would
include all the people living in the Niagara Peninsula, roughly 350,000. So
around here, everybody around here has a butcher shop within 20 miles.
Curiously, if you go to a city, chances of finding a speciality store,
like a butcher shop, you are more likely to find one. For people living in
Toronto, there are several butcher shops in each of the two major markets,
and a 15 mile radius would include 6-7 million, a quarter of the population
of the country. Sure, there aren't many butcher shops in the far north,
but there aren't many people up there so we can exclude them from *most
people*.

> with me so far?
>
> your pal,
> blake