3 ms·

I believe everyone (with a basic education) should be able to understand both, but I think the X-fold representation is much clearer-- just compare how similar

I believe everyone (with a basic education) should be able to understand both, but I think the X-fold representation is much clearer-- just compare how similar decreases by 80%, 90%, 95% appear at first glance-- but there is a full order of magnitude between EACH of those (while 50% and 55% is basically the same thing)! Calling it a 5-fold, 10-fold or 20-fold decrease makes the difference between them much more immediately obvious, IMO. Its similar with the miles/gallon vs. liters/100km metrics for fuel consumption, where one of them just seems immediately more intuitive to grasp and use (to me).

luckylion 6y ago
I find x-fold to be totally clear and intuitive for increases, but I find it weird for decreases. "We've decreased it by 5 times" sounds to me like "We've decreased it by 500%", which it obviously doesn't mean. "We've decreased it to 1/5th", "we've decreased it by 80%" makes more intuitive sense to me. Maybe it is similar to miles/gallon vs liters/100km and depends on where you grew up. I feel like the usage frequency changed, but it could just be that I'm noticing it more.