Math Is Hard -- By James Taranto, The Wall Street Journal

"Another strong month of sign-ups in new health insurance policies created under President Barack Obama's health care law pushed Illinois' total enrollment to 88,602 through Feb. 1, bringing the state on target with initial federal projections," the Chicago Tribune reports.

How does the paper arrive at the conclusion that the state is "on target with initial federal projections"? Observe:

Despite the surge of sign-ups, the disastrous launch of the Affordable Care Act's open-enrollment period in October leaves the nationwide figures short of the administration's goal to have 4.4 million people signed up by the end of January, according to a September Department of Health and Human Services memo.

Feel free to pull out a calculator if you'd like to check our math. Divide 4.4 million by 50, the number of U.S. states, and you get 88,000--almost exactly the number of sign-ups in Illinois. If every state has 88,000 sign-ups, then the nation is on target.

Just one problem: Illinois, the fifth most populous state, accounts for approximately 1/25th, not 1/50th, of the national population.

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