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by kibwen 568 days ago
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".

3 comments

I am a 100% programmer
Open source, fully documented, and maintainable?
Not my domain; thats for the legal department, the documentation department and the maintenenace team
> 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 :’ )

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..."

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