zea_64 comments on Percentages

Percentages (mander.xyz)

submitted 2 years ago by fossilesque@mander.xyz to c/science_memes@mander.xyz

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[–] zea_64@lemmy.blahaj.zone 19 points 2 years ago (7 children)

I've always wondered how to disambiguate multiplication and addition of percentages. I guess that's what percentage points are for?

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[–] lemmydividebyzero@reddthat.com 32 points 2 years ago

10% of your people vote for a party.

The votes increase by 10% => now 11%

The votes increase by 200% => now 30%

The votes increased by 50 percent points => now 60%

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[–] RiceMunk@sopuli.xyz 10 points 2 years ago (4 children)

The annoying part is that there is no well-known notation for showing percentage points, so people use % for both percentages and percentage points.

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[–] ziggurat@lemmy.world 7 points 2 years ago (2 children)

In deep rock galactic survival, the color of the number is different for percentage and percentage points

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[–] OneWomanCreamTeam@sh.itjust.works 5 points 2 years ago (1 child)

We really should just have a different symbol tho. Maybe we do, I'm not a math wiz, but we certainly don't have a broadly used one.

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[–] EmpathicVagrant@lemmy.world 1 point 2 years ago

I’d love to see percentage points as a symbol that’s literally “%” with dots in the circles

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[–] Szyler@lemmy.world 2 points 2 years ago*

I like how some games use "increases by +10%" as percentage points and "increases by 10%" as percentage.

Or how oath of exile does it, with "(base + base * increases by y%) * z% more"

So with a base of 5%, chance increased by 20%, and chance increased by 30%, with a 40% more chance, you'd get:

(5% + 5% x (20% + 30%)) x (1+40%) = 7.5% x 1.4 = 10.5%

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[–] Kazumara@discuss.tchncs.de 8 points 2 years ago

Exactly. Unfortunately, they aren't used widely and consistently enough. Even in the press. So you frequently have to second guess what you're reading.

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