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by ugh 5627 days ago
Well, the difference between sold iPhones and other iOS devices clearly is “statistically significant” and a 51 to 49 majority in the Senate is also “statistically significant” (but the term does not make any sense if applied to Senate majorities). So yeah, most it is.
1 comments

You're missing the point: The difference between 17 and 16 million, is not a statistically significant /majority/, please be careful when quoting, because you missed the most important piece of what I said above.

17 million as compared to 16 million is not 'a large quantity' more as compared to 16 million.

If you understand that 'most' is the superlative form of 'much' or 'many' you understand that you're saying there is a large amount (more) of iDevices being sold as compared to the number of iPhones being sold, when all things considered that number is less 10%! Hardly a supermajority and very much in the realm of "simple majority."

I brought this up on Freenode in ##English. They were absolutely appalled by your claim, "half plus one is most."

If you have further questions I highly recommend the erudite discussions they can provide. They are quite well versed in English grammar and usage, I think you will find their comments instructive.

Edit: Also I took the liberty of consecrating the discoveries made in the form of a blog post --> http://voxinfinitus.net/blog/articles/2011/01/usage-most