Comment on Percentages
sem@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 weeks agoMaybe I’m wrong but by writing “increase by 80%” there is ambiguity you don’t get if you instead spelled out:
- Increase by 80 percent
- Increase by 80 percentage points
Comment on Percentages
sem@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 weeks agoMaybe I’m wrong but by writing “increase by 80%” there is ambiguity you don’t get if you instead spelled out:
pseudo@jlai.lu 2 weeks ago
I’m not an expert either and your second option is definitly clearer than mine but I believe the % symbol doesn’t have the meaning of percentage point. It is better to make things easier for people to understand but people should also make the effort of properly reading even when it is not fully dumbed down. These are prepositions, so basic english not scientist jargon.
Droggelbecher@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Im a high school maths teacher and that’s what we’re supposed to teach, % means percent, not percentage points. Maths always tries to have agreed-upon unambiguous definitions of things, precisely to avoid confusion.
fallingcats@discuss.tchncs.de 2 weeks ago
Laughs in ambiguous notation
Droggelbecher@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
I thought of an example or two and corrected my comment to ‘tries to’ as I was typing haha