Another Well Know Expression that Irritates Me

About a year ago I wrote a post about an expression people often say that drives me batty. Today I'd like to add another...

...I hate it when people are making an argument about something and in the process of doing so present a bunch of numbers and then say, "Do the math!"

An example might be something along the lines of, "President Obama states that the total cost of his new health care program will be 900 billion dollars, but others have stated that the initial cost alone could be 700 billion dollars and then 200 billion dollars a year for the next seven years. Do the math, people! This Obama guy is trying to destroy this country!"

I don't like the expression for a couple of reasons:

1. It seems awfully bossy to me. Maybe I'm all wrong about this, but my feeling is that pretty much only math teachers should be assigning people math problems. Debators especially should not be doing so. I'm trying to listen to the person and make intelligent choices. I don't need him assigning me homework while I'm listening. And it just seems so rude to make it an imperative sentence like that. It makes me want to counter with, "If we don't do SOMETHING to stem the rising cost of health care in this country, 2 trillion dollars is going to sound like a pittance. Diagram the sentence, people! And after you've done that, make me a sandwich! And somebody change the oil in my car!"

2. I've already DONE the math. When a person makes a statement like the one above, he or she is basically speaking to two groups of people: 1) People who already understand where the person is going and have already done the calculating without being told to do so, and 2) people who DON'T understand where the person is going and aren't going to be able to do the math regardless of whether or not the person tells them to do so. In either case, the insistence to "Do the math!" is going to be a waste.

So let's all stop saying it.