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This is a knee-jerk response and doesn't really apply to the parent. The gas price raise was certainly not an artifact of having few data points or low resoluti

This is a knee-jerk response and doesn't really apply to the parent. The gas price raise was certainly not an artifact of having few data points or low resolution as in your example.

mikeash 11y ago
I read it as pointing out that if you take an extremely small number and increase it by a large percentage, the result is still pretty small. Here, the price of gas has gone up by 6,000%. That's a lot! Except that in absolute terms, the price has gone from $0.02/gallon to $0.11/gallon. I can see larger fluctuations than that just by crossing the street in many places.
- harperlee 11y ago
  Yes but then again if I purchase a hundred gallons, I go from paying $2 to $110. So it is indeed such a big growth in price. They are fundamentally different dimensions, because a transaction value goes from negative infinite to positive infinite (from a specific point of view), and in it, zero is just a specific point in the scale (that could be moved by fees or other debts to be netted against); whereas number of visitors can't go negative, and in such a scale zero is absolute (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Absolute_scale https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Absolute_scale). This makes the comparison dangerous. But it seems that pointing that deserves downvotes...
  - rawTruthHurts 11y ago
    Deserved downvotes not for missing the math, but missing the click-baity-ness, I presume.
- flubert 11y ago
  >Here, the price of gas has gone up by 6,000%. That's a lot! Except that in absolute terms, the price has gone from $0.02/gallon to $0.11/gallon ...It looks like you are missing a factor of 10. 6000% is 60x, so as near as I can tell gas was $0.002 per gallon, and now is rising to $0.11 per gallon. http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-02-17/venezuela-raises-gasoline-prices-for-first-time-since-1996-ikrf0ppn http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-02-17/venezuela-...
  - mikeash 11y ago
    You're right, temporary brain failure. Looks like it's too late to edit the original, but let the record show that it was really $0.002/gallon.

This is a knee-jerk response and doesn't really apply to the parent. The gas price raise was certainly not an artifact of having few data points or low resolution as in your example.

mikeash 11y ago

I read it as pointing out that if you take an extremely small number and increase it by a large percentage, the result is still pretty small. Here, the price of gas has gone up by 6,000%. That's a lot! Except that in absolute terms, the price has gone from $0.02/gallon to $0.11/gallon. I can see larger fluctuations than that just by crossing the street in many places.

harperlee 11y ago
Yes but then again if I purchase a hundred gallons, I go from paying $2 to $110. So it is indeed such a big growth in price. They are fundamentally different dimensions, because a transaction value goes from negative infinite to positive infinite (from a specific point of view), and in it, zero is just a specific point in the scale (that could be moved by fees or other debts to be netted against); whereas number of visitors can't go negative, and in such a scale zero is absolute (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Absolute_scale https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Absolute_scale). This makes the comparison dangerous. But it seems that pointing that deserves downvotes...
- rawTruthHurts 11y ago
  Deserved downvotes not for missing the math, but missing the click-baity-ness, I presume.
flubert 11y ago
>Here, the price of gas has gone up by 6,000%. That's a lot! Except that in absolute terms, the price has gone from $0.02/gallon to $0.11/gallon ...It looks like you are missing a factor of 10. 6000% is 60x, so as near as I can tell gas was $0.002 per gallon, and now is rising to $0.11 per gallon. http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-02-17/venezuela-raises-gasoline-prices-for-first-time-since-1996-ikrf0ppn http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-02-17/venezuela-...
- mikeash 11y ago
  You're right, temporary brain failure. Looks like it's too late to edit the original, but let the record show that it was really $0.002/gallon.