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I agree about clearing up ambiguity. But I'm not convinced that there's a best way to answer it without context. For instance, enter "1%" into Wolfram and it'l
by injb 4y ago
I agree about clearing up ambiguity. But I'm not convinced that there's a best way to answer it without context.
For instance, enter "1%" into Wolfram and it'll tell you it's 1/100. Do the same for 3% and it'll tell you it's 3/100. Now ask it to add those 2 fractions, and it'll obviously give you 4/100 - which it reports can be expressed as 4%.
These are supposed to be alternate representations of the same thing, so arguably the answer shouldn't be different.
- civilized 4y agoI agree, choosing a single answer at all is a bit weird here.
- beardyw 4y agoThough to be fair in normal usage 100 + 3% would be 103. I feel there is an implicit "of it" after 3% which you wouldn't expect with 3/100. I think it's accountant maths.
- skyde 4y agobasically the « % » symbol in 3% is a fraction notation or it’s a type notation you can overload the add operation like below. Add(int x, Percent y) = x + (y/100)*x
- nh23423fefe 4y agobut `+` is polymorphic in the inputs as is `print` just because `print` does one thing doesn't really mean `+` is constrained in the same way
- injb 4y agoRight, I'm just saying I think it's reasonable to expect + to be kind of isomorphic with different representations of the same thing. Let's say f(x) gives some alternate representation of x. Then f(3) + f(1) should be equal to f(3 + 1). Under this interpretation, f(3%) = 3/100 etc, so that 3% + 1% = 4%. But you could certainly argue that the idea of equating 3% with 3/100 is simply wrong. I like it because I like to think of "per" as meaning "divided by", and we generally use it that way when we use units like "metres per second = m/s = ms^(-1)".