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I recently called out my bank for advertising a "0.10%" savings interest rate, a similar problem I think. To anyone here it's obvious that this is the same as

I recently called out my bank for advertising a "0.10%" savings interest rate, a similar problem I think. To anyone here it's obvious that this is the same as a "0.1%" rate, but I do suspect that to a not-insignificant proportion of the population, they'd consider "10 > 1", and conclude that this account is better for them than another one offering "0.2%" interest. I realise this might be a stretch, but to look at it another way, should a bank be allowed to advertise their savings rate as "0.100%" or "0.10000%"?

huehehue 5y ago
This sounded silly until I remembered that software versioning trips me up just the same. I always read 1.2.11 as < 1.2.2
- xcskier56 5y ago
  This is so true. The other day I spent a good 10 minutes trying to upgrade a gem to > 2.3 when it was already at 2.11
- Hamuko 5y ago
  I find normal version numbers pretty simple as a software developer (general population seemed to be buffled by how macOS 10.9 could ever be followed by macOS 10.10) but I always get confused when I see Cyberpunk 2077's version numbers that go 1.22 → 1.23 → 1.3 → 1.31. It just doesn't compute that you go from minor version 23 to minor version 3.
- dylan604 5y ago
  Yes, but #.#.# is not a valid number/decimal/monetary notation. You cannot enter that number into a calculator, and I'm not sure you'd even be able to use that as a valid numerical value in any programming language. For anyone getting confused that 0.1 == 0.10, then how is that the writer's fault? There are formatting requirements that require a significant digit number of places (scientific notation as an example). I don't know that actually applies to bank marketing material, but it could be a style guide type of thing to keep numbers formatted the same. Either way, it does not change the value of the number. If you misread it, it is not the company's fault. They have provided factual information.
  - bmitc 5y ago
    > If you misread it, it is not the company's fault. They have provided factual information. That’s really not a fair argument given advertising and marketing theory and schemes. Who knows about this particular case since we don’t know if the 0.10% needed to be compared to other rates like 0.08%, where the formatting would maybe make more sense. But it’s not beyond imagination that someone could try to hook a customer with numbers. It’s done all the time with the whole $8.99 thing.
    - dylan604 5y ago
      That's funny timing, as I just mentioned the other day on here that the $.99 vs $1.00 thing was a marketing tactic. However, someone countered that it is a remnant from the old days of forcing the clerk to ring out the customer at the register to make correct change. This was to help avoid the temptation of pocketing the exact dollar amount. A pricing practice that has essentially just stuck around, and possibly repurposed???? Either way, I've learned basic maths. .1 == .10. I would be willing to guess that the average public would not think that .10 > .1, and that this whole confusion is really only for developers that have started using decimal notation in versions where .10 > .1 is true.
      - hermitdev 5y ago
        As an engineer, the trailing 0 is significant: it indicates with what precision it was rounded to. [0.5, .15) could become .1, with 1 significant digit, but not .10 with 2 significant digits. Doubtful it matters in this case, but that extra zero can convey extra meaning.
- kelp 5y ago
  For this reason I tend to prefer the way OpenBSD versions their releases. They just did 6.9 and the next one will be 7.0. But this really only works over long periods of time because they only do two releases a year. It took me a bit to get my head around Linux kernel versioning where the 2nd digit just goes up until they feel like it's time for a new first digit version.
  - jobigoud 5y ago
    In that case the change of major version loses its meaning. They could use 69 and 70.
- cardiffspaceman 5y ago
  Rock climbing's ratings with Yosemite Decimal System have 5.10 harder than 5.9 [1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yosemite_Decimal_System https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yosemite_Decimal_System
micromacrofoot 5y ago
I suppose someone should first study whether or not the average person knows the difference between .10% and .1% – or whether it has subconscious effects. The problem with the current way things work is that the bank likely has done a little research or focus groups themselves... and they have no incentive to publicize their data in a way that informs people.
kiawe_fire 5y ago
Oh my! I’ve often seen rates given by banks with at least one extra digit and wondered why. It never occurred to me it was a marketing ploy.
- danpalmer 5y ago
  I suspect this may be more attributable to ignorance/error than to malice/marketing, but it's still not great that no one spotted it.
- jawilson2 5y ago
  In finance we use basis points, or bps, which is %/100. This isn't unusual.
paisawalla 5y ago
How did the bank respond? Did they change anything?
- danpalmer 5y ago
  "Thank you for bringing this to our attention" That was maybe a month ago, still the same. I'm not the most impressed, I found a bug in their iOS app that would multiply monetary values by 100 when doing various (normal) text editing steps as you input values. I found this by nearly transferring £1000 instead of £10 to a friend. The bug was an honest mistake with `NSNumberFormatter` in the iOS SDK, but I feel like a bank can't make "honest mistakes" at that sort of level.
conistonwater 5y ago
This might be Regulation DD, set by the Federal Reserve if you're in the US, or something similar if you're elsewhere: https://www.federalreserve.gov/boarddocs/caletters/2009/0914/09-14-attachment.pdf https://www.federalreserve.gov/boarddocs/caletters/2009/0914... > It must round the annual percentage yield, the annual percentage yield earned, and the interest rate to the nearest one-hundredth of one percentage point (.01%) and express them to two decimal places. (p.17) Personally, I don't see what the problem would be with 0.10%, doesn't seem misleading in the slightest. I also love how the regulation is called "Truth in Savings", like how could anybody be against it?
- danpalmer 5y ago
  The bank is in the UK. I don't know if there's any legislation around this communication, but it doesn't seem that great even if it's legal.
  - throw_away 5y ago
    You're worried about unfair competition with banks advertising "0.1%" or "0.2%", but with a must rule like this, there wouldn't be any of those competitors. Anyone with the same rate would advertise "0.10%", and anyone who wanted to beat would say "0.20%" (or more likely, "0.11%").
  - noir_lord 5y ago
    Probably - iirc FSA regulate that stuff and can be quite pernickety about what they'll allow.
aeries 5y ago
In the financial world we think in bps (units of 0.01%), so it would be standard to write percentages with 2 decimals so you can easily see it's 10bps at a glance.
frumper 5y ago
I would suggest that this is a similar problem, but for a different reason. I'm not choosing a bank because they offer a 0.1%, 0.10% or 0.2% savings interest rate. That is pretty inconsequential.
BeFlatXIII 5y ago
> I realise this might be a stretch, but to look at it another way, should a bank be allowed to advertise their savings rate as "0.100%" or "0.10000%"? Yes. Lotteries still exist. What's another tax on the mathematically illiterate?

huehehue 5y ago

This sounded silly until I remembered that software versioning trips me up just the same. I always read 1.2.11 as < 1.2.2

xcskier56 5y ago
This is so true. The other day I spent a good 10 minutes trying to upgrade a gem to > 2.3 when it was already at 2.11
Hamuko 5y ago
I find normal version numbers pretty simple as a software developer (general population seemed to be buffled by how macOS 10.9 could ever be followed by macOS 10.10) but I always get confused when I see Cyberpunk 2077's version numbers that go 1.22 → 1.23 → 1.3 → 1.31. It just doesn't compute that you go from minor version 23 to minor version 3.
dylan604 5y ago
Yes, but #.#.# is not a valid number/decimal/monetary notation. You cannot enter that number into a calculator, and I'm not sure you'd even be able to use that as a valid numerical value in any programming language. For anyone getting confused that 0.1 == 0.10, then how is that the writer's fault? There are formatting requirements that require a significant digit number of places (scientific notation as an example). I don't know that actually applies to bank marketing material, but it could be a style guide type of thing to keep numbers formatted the same. Either way, it does not change the value of the number. If you misread it, it is not the company's fault. They have provided factual information.
- bmitc 5y ago
  > If you misread it, it is not the company's fault. They have provided factual information. That’s really not a fair argument given advertising and marketing theory and schemes. Who knows about this particular case since we don’t know if the 0.10% needed to be compared to other rates like 0.08%, where the formatting would maybe make more sense. But it’s not beyond imagination that someone could try to hook a customer with numbers. It’s done all the time with the whole $8.99 thing.
  - dylan604 5y ago
    That's funny timing, as I just mentioned the other day on here that the $.99 vs $1.00 thing was a marketing tactic. However, someone countered that it is a remnant from the old days of forcing the clerk to ring out the customer at the register to make correct change. This was to help avoid the temptation of pocketing the exact dollar amount. A pricing practice that has essentially just stuck around, and possibly repurposed???? Either way, I've learned basic maths. .1 == .10. I would be willing to guess that the average public would not think that .10 > .1, and that this whole confusion is really only for developers that have started using decimal notation in versions where .10 > .1 is true.
    - hermitdev 5y ago
      As an engineer, the trailing 0 is significant: it indicates with what precision it was rounded to. [0.5, .15) could become .1, with 1 significant digit, but not .10 with 2 significant digits. Doubtful it matters in this case, but that extra zero can convey extra meaning.
kelp 5y ago
For this reason I tend to prefer the way OpenBSD versions their releases. They just did 6.9 and the next one will be 7.0. But this really only works over long periods of time because they only do two releases a year. It took me a bit to get my head around Linux kernel versioning where the 2nd digit just goes up until they feel like it's time for a new first digit version.
- jobigoud 5y ago
  In that case the change of major version loses its meaning. They could use 69 and 70.
cardiffspaceman 5y ago
Rock climbing's ratings with Yosemite Decimal System have 5.10 harder than 5.9 [1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yosemite_Decimal_System https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yosemite_Decimal_System

micromacrofoot 5y ago

I suppose someone should first study whether or not the average person knows the difference between .10% and .1% – or whether it has subconscious effects. The problem with the current way things work is that the bank likely has done a little research or focus groups themselves... and they have no incentive to publicize their data in a way that informs people.

kiawe_fire 5y ago

Oh my! I’ve often seen rates given by banks with at least one extra digit and wondered why. It never occurred to me it was a marketing ploy.

danpalmer 5y ago
I suspect this may be more attributable to ignorance/error than to malice/marketing, but it's still not great that no one spotted it.
jawilson2 5y ago
In finance we use basis points, or bps, which is %/100. This isn't unusual.

paisawalla 5y ago

How did the bank respond? Did they change anything?

danpalmer 5y ago
"Thank you for bringing this to our attention" That was maybe a month ago, still the same. I'm not the most impressed, I found a bug in their iOS app that would multiply monetary values by 100 when doing various (normal) text editing steps as you input values. I found this by nearly transferring £1000 instead of £10 to a friend. The bug was an honest mistake with `NSNumberFormatter` in the iOS SDK, but I feel like a bank can't make "honest mistakes" at that sort of level.

conistonwater 5y ago

This might be Regulation DD, set by the Federal Reserve if you're in the US, or something similar if you're elsewhere: https://www.federalreserve.gov/boarddocs/caletters/2009/0914/09-14-attachment.pdf https://www.federalreserve.gov/boarddocs/caletters/2009/0914... > It must round the annual percentage yield, the annual percentage yield earned, and the interest rate to the nearest one-hundredth of one percentage point (.01%) and express them to two decimal places. (p.17) Personally, I don't see what the problem would be with 0.10%, doesn't seem misleading in the slightest. I also love how the regulation is called "Truth in Savings", like how could anybody be against it?

danpalmer 5y ago
The bank is in the UK. I don't know if there's any legislation around this communication, but it doesn't seem that great even if it's legal.
- throw_away 5y ago
  You're worried about unfair competition with banks advertising "0.1%" or "0.2%", but with a must rule like this, there wouldn't be any of those competitors. Anyone with the same rate would advertise "0.10%", and anyone who wanted to beat would say "0.20%" (or more likely, "0.11%").
- noir_lord 5y ago
  Probably - iirc FSA regulate that stuff and can be quite pernickety about what they'll allow.

aeries 5y ago

In the financial world we think in bps (units of 0.01%), so it would be standard to write percentages with 2 decimals so you can easily see it's 10bps at a glance.

frumper 5y ago

I would suggest that this is a similar problem, but for a different reason. I'm not choosing a bank because they offer a 0.1%, 0.10% or 0.2% savings interest rate. That is pretty inconsequential.

BeFlatXIII 5y ago

> I realise this might be a stretch, but to look at it another way, should a bank be allowed to advertise their savings rate as "0.100%" or "0.10000%"? Yes. Lotteries still exist. What's another tax on the mathematically illiterate?