In a message dated 10/13/2006 8:44:36 A.M. Central Daylight Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:
>Statements like this always confuse me. How can something be 37 times >(or 3700%) smaller or cheaper than something else? Since the original topic this time is the innumeracy of the masses, my comments are not pedantic off-topic nonsense. >As I understand it, if A is 37% cheaper than B, then it costs 63% >(100-37) what B costs. Congratulations. You pass 4th- or 5th-grade arithmetic. >If A is 80% cheaper, then it costs 20% of B's cost? >Am I right so far? Yes. >Then wouldn't that mean that 100% cheaper would make it free? Yes. >So how can anything be more than 100% cheaper than anything else? 100% less than 10 units of something is 0 units. 200% less than 10 units is -10 units. So 200% less than $10.00 is -$10.00. In my opinion, that which is more than 100% cheaper means that the buyer will be getting money back from the vendor for each one he buys. Since this really is nonsense, then we can only conclude that the majority of Americans have absorbed the general dumbing down of the language, word meaning, arithmetic, logical and critical thinking, and knowledge and education in general. Whenever I hear a media or advertising moron say the word "percent" I unlatch the safety on my Browning. >If saying "37 times cheaper" is intended to mean it costs 1/37 (or >approximately 2.7%), then wouldn't it really be about 97.3% cheaper? This is almost certainly what the innumerate person really means. But 37 times cheaper sounds more enticing to the average innumerate listener. Someone who can think critically should be revolted by such absurd statements as X is 37 times less than Y. But since the innumerate masses around will continue communicating like this, we few who remember what percentages, less than, and more than mean from grammar school arithmetic will have to suffer silently. Bill Fairchild "[War] ... serves to keep up deceitful expectations which prevent people from looking into the defects and abuses of government. It is the lo here! and the lo there! that amuses and cheats the multitude." [1792; Thomas Paine; The Rights of Man] ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the message: GET IBM-MAIN INFO Search the archives at http://bama.ua.edu/archives/ibm-main.html
