The total 620 is actually correct again: 0.0072 times 0.0003 times 311591917 is 673.04. I suppose the 53 person discrepancy is due to rounding towards 0.03% but using a more accurate number for the actual computation (e.g. 0.0277%).
You can’t just throw extra digits around like that. It’s a bit unusual and jarring to see the population of the US quoted as “311591917” even if that is the census figure, because such a high-precision number would only be true for about a minute and you don’t know which minute.
Chill please. I used the exact number from the paper as quoted somewhere else in this discussion. Which seems adequate when saying that the authors final number (sixhundredsomething) is most likely correct even if the intermediate value "0.02%" is obviously wrong (and probably just a mistake in the print).
If you have questions as to which point in time this number refers to, I kindly refer you to the original paper and/or the authors.
No need to be rude. Sig figs are important, I reworded the comment a couple different ways to make the comment polite, and I’d appreciate the same courtesy. The use of an exact number for the US population is not justifiable, whether you can cite the source for it is not germane.
