Is or are?

[pwaa]

"Only about one in four doctors, mostly in large group practices, is using
the electronic record system." [from Panel Set to Study Safety of
Electronic Patient Data]

This is a quote from the New York Times. The argument is whether "about one in four doctors," which refers to approximately a quarter of all doctors, is plural or singular. Opinions?

Comments

[sinboy]

This is still a case of "One quarter are using" versus "one in four is using".

[patrickwonders]

I'm of the opinion that "is" is appropriate here. The phrase "one in four" while really meaning "1/4th of all doctors" is expressing it as if there were four representative doctors, one of which is the subject of the sentence.

[e_musings]

That's how I see it, too.

[ms_0]

Notice it says "about one in four". So perhaps it's .98 or 1.02, which presumably would be considered plural. Anyway, why isn't the subject of the sentence "doctors"? It doesn't say "one doctor in four".

[patrickwonders]

True, but to me "about one in four doctors" is shorthand for "about one doctor in four doctors," and I would never consider saying "about one doctors in four doctors."

[thetragicreturn]

"[O]ne doctor...is using the...system."

And that doctor happens to be one in four. That's my view.

[balmofgilead]

That's what I was going to say.

Also, from a smartass point of view, we don't know how many doctors there are in the world (and know that is not really part of grammar.) There could very well be just four of them.

[balmofgilead]

*knowing that is not really part of grammar

[thetragicreturn]

That's a really cool concept. Thanks for sharing that. :D