Bush would have said, "Hmm....from 10 to 20. That's 20 minus 10 or 10% more." Henry Baker wrote:
At 09:59 AM 8/23/2007, Dan Asimov wrote:
This should read:
This is because newspaper articles et al. are well known for royally screwing up clarity in such matters. (They will commonly use a phrase like "150% more" whether they mean 3/2 as much or 5/2 as much.)
This reminds me of a (possibly apocryphal) tale of a Congressional hearing on some very difficult technology. The scientist said that they were able to get some quantity to 10^10, but the goal required 10^20. Whereupon the Congressman said "then we're halfway there, already!".
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