[tablatom]

Off topic but if I may. The way people use percentages to express multiples is confusing. A doubling is a 100% increase. So a 200% increase is 3x, and so on. Then at some point we forget about the +1 and 1000% is "10 times the sum it previously paid for software licenses". Just a pet peeve I guess : )

[ghaff]

I sat on the unofficial style committee at a company I used to work for. I guess one of our also unofficial tenets was that usages that people regularly used incorrectly or were regularly incorrectly interpreted should be avoided--even if you're "technically" correct in using them. It's the written language equivalent to not using parentheses and depending on people applying, especially less common, precedence operations in code.

So no, not just your pet peeve. I personally hate 100% increase and that sort of thing. Even if I know the correct interpretation, I have no idea if the writer did.

[bell-cot]

> usages that people regularly used incorrectly or were regularly incorrectly interpreted should be avoided

Lordy, YES. A successful business must have good communication. Not people saying "actually, I was right, but ...".

[Thorrez]

Well "100% increase" is unlikely to have been written by a mistaken writer. It's any number above 100% where it's possible the writer made an error.

[ghaff]

And doubled would be even simpler. Yes 100% is probably mostly unambiguous but I'm certainly unsure about 131%.

[wccrawford]

The same kind of people that say "I'm not good at math" will fight to the death to say this the wrong way and not have to think about it, so it's a losing fight, unfortunately.

Now, any time I see anything more than 100% for an increase, I assume the person doesn't know how to say it properly, and the vast majority of the time I'm correct. I certainly never make any decisions (including opinions) based on that information without doing the math myself.

[jcelerier]

> the vast majority of the time

"wrong" and "correct" are only defined by what people actually say - if people mainly say "101% increase" to mean "new value = old value * 1.01" then that's what it means whether it makes sense grammatically or not.

[ropejumper]

But the point of communication is mutual understanding. I generally agree that language is what we make it be, but in this case the wrong usage, meaning the usage that is mathematically incorrect, is causing issues.

I can't just go around saying that my cat is siamese even if he's not just because I got it wrong one time and now this is what siamese means to me. Because my goal is to transmit accurate messages.

[avs733]

Caveat emptor may be legal in capitalism, but it is not a great way to be a coworker which was the point.

[kibwen]

Agreed. Don't express changes in percentages, express them as multiples.

In addition, don't express changes in terms of ratios, express them in terms of actual quantities.

So instead of saying "our efficiency increased by 100%", get rid of the ratio and express it as a multiple of the relevant underlying quantities, e.g. "our costs are 0.5x".

[blitzar]

I am a 100% programmer

[belter]

Open source, fully documented, and maintainable?

[blitzar]

Not my domain; thats for the legal department, the documentation department and the maintenenace team

[ocal5]

> don't express changes in terms of ratios, express them in terms of actual quantities.

Would be lovely, but transparency is not good for every way of doing business :’ )

[Double_a_92]

That's more a language issue than a number issue. 1000% is already a factor, it's literally the number 10.

The problem is that the whole sentence doesn't make sense with a number there. "Company claims 10 price hike drove it from VMware..."

[xnorswap]

By that argument, 100% is also a factor, but you wouldn't interpret "100% cost increase" as an unchanged cost, so a 10x price shouldn't be described as a "1000% cost increase".

[sjburt]

“10x price hike” would have been totally clear. “Factor of 10 price hike” would probably be a formal way to say it.

[miroljub]

Well, the way I look it is that if someone says 1000% increase, it may be whatever value between x8 and x12, rounded to the round number, to look more dramatic.

Would you really get more value from the headline if it said "923% increase" instead of 1000%?

[ghaff]

Over a 9x increase or almost a 10x increase would be just as dramatic and less mental effort and uncertainty to decode.

[smugma]

The article talks about 10 times the price. If that’s true the equivalent percent would be 1100%. So 1000% is a lower, rounded estimate; presumably 10X is also an estimate.

[scoot]

> The article talks about 10 times the price. If that’s true the equivalent percent would be 1100%.

I think you've just proven OPs point. 10x is a 900% increase, or 1,000% of the original price, not 1,100%.

Using percentage for anything other than a fraction of something (i.e. <= 100%) is usually done for effect, often done incorrectly, and even if done "correctly", leads to exactly this kind of confusion.

[montagg]

Just posted this exact thing and deleted it. Your’s is better.

[cbm-vic-20]

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."

[rapind]

But % “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.

[abofh]

333.33% this - drives me nuts.

[asddubs]

it's also because a 200% increase is 3x, but 200% of the old price is 2x

[Aachen]

Is a 200% increase 3x? When it says "200% more" then it's 2x the value on top of the original value, or when it says "levels are now at 200%" then the value doubled. But with "increase" as word, or with random other wordings as in the headline, I'm not actually sure how to take it. I intuitively took it as 10x the original value (not 11x) but I'm now thinking that's probably wrong

[esafak]

What's a 0% increase? The original quantity. Therefore a 200% increase has to be 3x.

[ralferoo]

> Is a 200% increase 3x?

Yes. Increase means the number went up. A 200% increase means that it increased by 200% of the original, so you have the original 1x and the increase of 2x for a total of 3x.

[lcnPylGDnU4H9OF]

“A 200% increase” is logically equivalent to “200% more”. Think about what it means for a number to “increase” or to be “more than” another number. How much is the “increase”? How much “more”? Unfortunately, “200% as much” is often what people mean when they say “200% more”.

(This difference became especially noticeable to me after playing^W practicing my math skills with incremental games for obscene amounts of time.)

[giva]

30% means 0.3. A 30% increase is x * 1.3. Why should it be different for 200%

[WXLCKNO]

Because it's relative to the original value.

Your logic: 100% means 1. A 100% increase is x * 1.

Correct logic: 100% means 1. A 100% increase is x + (x * 1)

Your 30% example is the same x + (x * 0.3)

200% is x + (x * 2) for a total of 3 times the original amount.

Same goes for 1000% being x + (x * 10) for a total of 11 times the original amount.

[atorodius]

Well it depends if you mean increase or not. in the OP it could mean either („X% price hike“ could be interpreted as new price is X% of old price)

[stonemetal12]

Switching to a multiple doesn't change the confusion either. A 10x increase, is x + 10x in the same way a 1K% increase would be x + 10x.

[ta1243]

"1000%" isn't much more than 900% in the grand scheme of things, it's just 10% more - and that's before likely rounding errors it conveys the scale.

"200%" increase vs "100%" increase is double the difference, a far more significant number.

[foxglacier]

It's intentional on the part of the journalist to mislead readers by making the number seem bigger. An off-by-one error is a small price to pay for more clicks.

[Y_Y]

Would it be so hard to give a ratio? Or the actual numbers? I know people are familiar with percentages, but I think overall the sunny do much for understanding and are really only good as an abbreviation to save repetition, which isn't happening here.

[Lutger]

Its confusing, but in this context it is just another way of saying 'huge'. 1000 is a bigger number than 10, so 1000% feels bigger than 10x. The exact numbers don't matter here, so thats why I think people will keep using percentages.

[pdpi]

In between that and people not understanding the difference between % and pp, I avoid using percentages at all unless I have to.

[ZoomZoomZoom]

The issue is language ambiguity, not always just math proficiency.

A "price hike" is not necessary an "increase", i.e. a sum of the old price and a change, which is X + X * (P/100). It very well might also mean "a price hike to Y", i.e. "the new price is now P percent of the old" which is a multiple (X * (P/100)).

But yeah, it's usually very confusing for all the parties involved, especially when the change is negative.

[ralferoo]

> A "price hike" is not necessary an "increase"

A "price hike" is always an increase, and specifically a large increase. If the value has decreased it'd be a "price drop" and a large drop would be a "price slash".

[ZoomZoomZoom]

Yeah, that's the point, ambiguity.

Again, what I meant is, of course, "price hike" in itself always constitutes some increase, but its nature can be one of two: 1. positive delta 2. setting the price to a ratio > 1.

[outside1234]

They do this because it makes it look like an even bigger increase.

[_fizz_buzz_]

Yeah, but a 1000% increase is roughly a 10x increase. Good enough for me.

[eadmund]

Even worse, people who say ‘3 times less than’ (which would be n - 3n = -2n) when they mean ‘one third as much as.’

And of course, the worst people of all think that one third is less than one fourth.

Personally, I blame the widespread usage of decimal notation rather than fractions. The so-called ‘metric’ system (a misnomer, because every system of measurements … measures) bears a lot of blame here.