Eggcorn: pared down > paired down

[Damien Hall]

Just spotted in a statistical analysis (by a student, so no citation,
unfortunately!):

'When [the local status data were submitted to chi-square analysis] without
gender split, p = 0.33, [...]; when paired down into male and female data
tables, only the female chi-test showed a significant difference, p = 0.004'

Presumably, the *pared* > *paired* eggcorn comes from the split of the
sexually-undifferentiated data which showed no significant differences into a
pair of tables differentiating the data by sex, one for males, one for females.

Damien Hall
University of Pennsylvania

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org