OT Evidence for DECIMATE ( 'one in ten')

[Joel S. Berson]

At 1/8/2008 08:00 PM, Benjamin Barrett wrote:
>Joel S. Berson wrote:
>>At 1/8/2008 11:52 AM, Douglas G. Wilson wrote:
>>
>>>1884: <<when last they were quartered here they were twice-decimated
>>>by cholera, and left a fifth of their regiment in the cemetery here.>>
>>
>>Just a slight quarrel here -- the writer of this needs a re-education
>>in arithmetic.  Successive decimations leave 19 % in the cemetery.
>>
>>Joel
>19% sounds like a fifth to me. I don't think the figures are that
>accurate to begin with, and this is prose, anyway, not a math paper. BB

So does 11% (in one of Doug's examples) sound like a decimation to me.

(I did mark my original message OT; perhaps I should have added :-). )

Joel

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