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The Otto Group’s sales are up 17% in Germany since the recession, while Amazon’s have doubled since 2010. Huh? This comparison confused me. I wonder why the au

by trg2 13y ago

The Otto Group’s sales are up 17% in Germany since the recession, while Amazon’s have doubled since 2010. Huh? This comparison confused me. I wonder why the author didn't use the same years? What was the baseline?

iwasakabukiman 13y ago
I read it as 2010 being the baseline for both, with "since the recession" meaning 2010. But it's fairly ambiguous. It could mean any number of things. It could also be that the numbers for the Otto Group aren't public for whatever reason.
- mikeash 13y ago
  Wasn't 2010 basically the "mission accomplished" point for the recession where the recovery was officially declared to have begun? Maybe they're just assuming everybody knows that.
- blurpin 13y ago
  I edited the story. We had to write it this way bc Otto reports a fiscal year that ends in February. Amazon's fiscal year is the calendar year. So it wasn't exact comparison and we had to fudge.
SilasX 13y ago
It's an unfortunate but common practice I've noticed: they don't want repetition, or anything close to it, so they jump between synonyms -- or, sadly, what the journalist thinks is a synonym. But since a lot of synonyms aren't perfect (or just aren't synonyms), you can't tell what they mean, and this is a prime example of it. I see this same phenomenon in software/API documentation too, where you can't tell what is a necessary term to use, and what's an arbitrary label. Most recent case was a vim doc for how to record macros, and gave an example starting with "qq", which will store the macro into the letter q. But you always type q to start the macro, so using an example where the macro also is called 'q' just confuses things. They should have used an example like "qa", where it's clear that q is for all macros, and the second char is where it gets store. (Yes, you can un-ring that bell with further clarification, but it's still a bad example.)
- megablast 13y ago
  More likely they have different data for different time spans, so throw in what they have.

by trg2 13y ago

iwasakabukiman 13y ago

I read it as 2010 being the baseline for both, with "since the recession" meaning 2010. But it's fairly ambiguous. It could mean any number of things. It could also be that the numbers for the Otto Group aren't public for whatever reason.

mikeash 13y ago
Wasn't 2010 basically the "mission accomplished" point for the recession where the recovery was officially declared to have begun? Maybe they're just assuming everybody knows that.
blurpin 13y ago
I edited the story. We had to write it this way bc Otto reports a fiscal year that ends in February. Amazon's fiscal year is the calendar year. So it wasn't exact comparison and we had to fudge.

SilasX 13y ago

It's an unfortunate but common practice I've noticed: they don't want repetition, or anything close to it, so they jump between synonyms -- or, sadly, what the journalist thinks is a synonym. But since a lot of synonyms aren't perfect (or just aren't synonyms), you can't tell what they mean, and this is a prime example of it. I see this same phenomenon in software/API documentation too, where you can't tell what is a necessary term to use, and what's an arbitrary label. Most recent case was a vim doc for how to record macros, and gave an example starting with "qq", which will store the macro into the letter q. But you always type q to start the macro, so using an example where the macro also is called 'q' just confuses things. They should have used an example like "qa", where it's clear that q is for all macros, and the second char is where it gets store. (Yes, you can un-ring that bell with further clarification, but it's still a bad example.)

megablast 13y ago
More likely they have different data for different time spans, so throw in what they have.