3 ms·
My pet peeve goes in the opposite direction: the use of multiples and percentages greater than one to describe smaller numbers: "This is 3x smaller."
by cbm-vic-20 2y ago
My pet peeve goes in the opposite direction: the use of multiples and percentages greater than one to describe smaller numbers: "This is 3x smaller."
- abofh 2y ago333.33% this - drives me nuts.
- rapind 2y agoBut % “decrease” is just as bad as percent “increase” that OP is railing against. Whereas the inverse of 3x is (1/3)x and still far clearer (three times the size and one third the size). Meanwhile 3x “smaller” is the inverse of 3x “bigger”, not 300% “increase”, which is mathematically different. The adjectives break our brains. Much easier to comprehend if we don’t use them, using “the size” instead.