[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.