I believe in numbers

This just in from 538

Recent surveys have found that only about one in 10 Americans report that they do not believe in God, and only about 3 percent identify as atheist. But a new study suggests that the true number of atheists could be much larger, perhaps even 10 times larger than previously estimated.

That's really ambiguous. On one reading, it suggests that 10 in 10 Americans report that they do not believe in God. That's clearly very unlikely, so the other reading must be true. And it is.

The study concludes that roughly one-quarter (26 percent) of Americans likely do not believe in God.

So it is the 3 percent who identify as atheists, rather than the one in 10 who report that they do not believe in God, that is way too low. But honestly, if that confusing sentence had read "the true number of self-identifying atheists ..." I wouldn't have anything to write about.