Can't believe nobody has linked the relevant xkcd yet
When my son was about to be born my mother in law caught wind that we didn't plan on circumcising (before researching it I mostly felt it was just strange to do cosmetic surgery on a newborn) but her argument was mostly parroting the 50% reduction in this that and the other disease, missing the fact that it was going from a 0.5% chance to a 0.25% chance, but of course introduced new risks by nature of being a surgery.
Naturally after looking more into it I learned just how bonkers circumcision is so I was far more cemented in my position
Difference between increase of x% (old percentage + old percentage * x%)% and increase of x percentage points (old percentage and x)%
So you're telling me there's a chance?
People got this wrong about inflation as well. In 2020 there was actual deflation, and in 2021 there was very minimal inflation, meaning prices were still largely lower or similar as 2019. Then we saw 9% inflation in 2022. Total inflation in 2024 vs the 2019 benchmark was around 15%. Or 3% average per year, which is barely over the baseline. People just hear 9% inflation, completely missing the fact that this was a YoY number relative to the Trump recession.
That's why when presenting numbers at work, we always distinguish a movement of X % (percent) from a movement of X ppts (percentage points)
Dark Souls cleared this up for me real quick.
I know all this. I play DPS!
Did this turn into an /iamverysmart thread ?
Convert percentage to fraction, i.e, 80% become 0.8 Then multiply with initial value
If it says 80% more use initial + (initial*80) or simply initial*1.8
Or if it says 80% less, use - in above calculation or multiply by 0.2
I find percentages more neat when used as fractional number Edited to escape the multiplication symbol
Even more confusing when you hear that the odds of catching a disease have increased by a %. In many ways odds can be more intuitive, but we're so used to working with simple probability that it's a total nightmare to wrap your head around at first.
Why lying with maths is so easy, the average person, even in developed countries is practically innumerate (massive hyperbole, but the fact lying with numbers is easy, still stands)
hopeful-weirdo just needs to be told to consider what increasing by 500% means and it'll click.
The different ways in which numbers slide up, down, sideways, diagonally.
Is the example in the post part of the fifth type of arithmetic?
- Addition +
- Subtraction -
- Multiplication x
- Division /
- Modulo %
The first time I learned about modulo as its' own branch of arithmetic was long out of school already, I had only hazily heard of it, on a PBS Nova documentary in the 1990s about Fermat's famous theorem and when it was proven after centuries of failed tries.
I think it's ambiguous and the 90% actually makes more sense. If you increase something by 5m you are taking the original value and adding 5m to it. For multiplication you should probably avoid the word increase and say scaled by instead. 10% scaled by 180% is 18%.
