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This is a very sensational title, and I'm sick of media companies exploiting: 1) the natural tendency for people to read "by X,XXX%" as "X,XXX times" and 2)
by mangeletti 11y ago
This is a very sensational title, and I'm sick of media companies exploiting:
1) the natural tendency for people to read "by X,XXX%" as "X,XXX times"
and
2) the fact that raising something from nearly 0 to anything that's not nearly zero will naturally be a large percentage increase, even if it is a small absolute increase
Guardian, here's a better, albeit, less apocalyptic and click-bait title:
Venezuela raised gasoline prices from nearly free ($0.02) to about 1/12th of what the rest of the world pays ($0.20), because government oil revenue is down.
- gruez 11y ago>1) the natural tendency for people to read "by X,XXX%" as "X,XXX times" Is that actually a thing? I understood it just fine.
- Vraxx 11y agoEven if it's not to that extent, the bigger number leaves a bigger impression without giving it much thought, even in a relatively trained mind. Once you parse that it says percent, sure, you can deduce that it's describing it proportionally and infer that the price was probably pretty low to begin with, but why do we need to have titles that require this to get the gist of it when we could describe it in a more clear manner from the beginning? edit: changed punctuation mark.