• zea
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    1816 hours ago

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

    • @[email protected]
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      912 hours ago

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

      • @Szyler
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        7 hours 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%

      • @ziggurat
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        712 hours ago

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

        • @[email protected]
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          59 hours ago

          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.

          • @EmpathicVagrant
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            14 hours ago

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

    • @[email protected]
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      2816 hours 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%

    • @[email protected]
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      714 hours 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.