4 ms·
I really don't want to be that guy, but I think the author meant to say '96.77%' instead of '3000%', or '96.66%' instead of '30x'.
by -mlv 2y ago
I really don't want to be that guy, but I think the author meant to say '96.77%' instead of '3000%', or '96.66%' instead of '30x'.
- larsrc 2y agoYou understood what they meant, though. But yeah, it's confusing. I argued with my PhD advisor over this several times. "50% slower" or "10% slower" is ready to understand, but "96% slower" is harder to figure out, and it's easy to dismiss the difference between 96% and 98% because the numbers are similar
- samatman 2y agoAs far as I can tell, this is an aspect of language which people merely pretend to have problems with, out of pedantry, rather than a barrier to understanding in any possible case. Everyone understands that if A is 2x faster than B, then B is 2x slower than A. If you say either of these things to someone with a basic grasp of sums, and then tell them A takes one second, they'll know that B takes two seconds. It doesn't matter which one you supply. No one would get this wrong.
- larsrc 2y agoOne of me and my PhD advisor got it wrong. When "120% slower" is vastly faster than "80% slower", there will be confusion.