4 ms·

In that case, why not say 13.5:9 instead of 3:2? Or 14.4:9 instead of 16:10? People confuse me.

• boomlinde 8y ago
  Using fractions to describe fractions sort of defeats the point, doesn't it? You confuse me.
  • pfooti 8y ago
    Generally speaking (from a math education perspective), people are bad at denominators. If you really want to compare ratios, and have established in the writing decimals in the numerator to afford that (TFA used 19.5:9 to describe an iphone which is what started my rant) then you should use 14.4:9 instead of 16:10. People see the latter and think it is quite similar to 16:9 because the 16s are the same, and don't realize that this is not true. 16:10 is actually closer in form factor to 3:2 than 16:9. But as a neighbor reply pointed out, it would probably be best to normalize to one. Do you want a 1.5 aspect ratio (3:2) or a 1.77 (16:9) one? Much easier to compare single numbers with each other.
    • boomlinde 8y ago
      I don't think 1.77 would make more intuitive sense to the average consumer of this type of product than 16:9, for the same reason that you don't typically write "add one unit of flour and 1.33 units of sugar" in a recipe. Particularly for screens, which most people think of in terms of two dimensional surfaces, using simple fractions seems more obvious, and for ratios like 4:3 and 16:9, numbers are particularly useless because they can't be used to exactly describe the relationship.
    • babygoat 8y ago
      Denominators don't apply here. We're talking about ratios, not fractions.