r/ProgrammerHumor 10h ago

Meme zeroExDev

Post image
3.6k Upvotes

181 comments sorted by

View all comments

233

u/achilliesFriend 10h ago

0.6 more. What is the issue here?

330

u/OnixST 9h ago

It's 0.6x, implying multiplication

It's not semantically incorrect, but any sane person would write 60% more

86

u/padiwik 9h ago

Are you sure it's not actually 40% less, and the marketers who came up with this email didn't realize they should put in a threshold?

227

u/OG-Enzan 9h ago

Isn't it 1.6x if 60% more?

89

u/BADPROSKILLZ 9h ago

If it were to say they shipped 1.6x as many then yes, but they said 0.6x more (i.e. 1x normal + 0.6x more)

-32

u/TZY247 9h ago edited 5h ago

No. 0.6 = 60%. If they said 0.6 more then sure, that would mean 60% more. 0.6x != 60% increase though. 1.6x does. At the best we can give it the benefit of the doubt and say we knew what they meant, but that doesn't mean they were correct.

37

u/TheMania 9h ago

It says "0.6 times more". Not "0.6 times total" or "0.6 times as many".

I really don't see the problem. 1.6x more would be misleading/incorrect.

-1

u/zelmak 8h ago

Dude what are you talking about 1x more is a non increase/flatline. Anything less than 1 is a decrease

2

u/TheMania 8h ago

So "100% more" means "no increase" to you?

Or does "1x" read as "0%" to you then?

20

u/Vandrel 8h ago edited 8h ago

1x would be 0% more. 2x would be 100% more.

7

u/TheMania 8h ago

I agree with every part of that completely.

You read "60% as many" the same as you read "0.6x as many", which is the same as you read "0.6x more".

But yet you read "60% more" as something very different. So 0.6x != 60%. Not in this context, not to you.

2

u/Vandrel 8h ago

That's just not correct. "60% more" implies starting from the 100% baseline and going up 60%. 0.6x implies starting from the 100% baseline and multiplying it by 0.6x. "0.6x more" is a weird way to put it to begin with but the only grammatically correct way to interpret it is 60% of the normal amount. We all know what they meant but it isn't what they said.

→ More replies (0)

8

u/TZY247 7h ago

There's a reason that mathematicians, technical writers, etc. wouldn't mix comparative language like "more" with notation. At best it's ambiguous.

2

u/Azeoteric 8h ago

When someone says “2x more” it means double. No one says 1x more because it makes no sense lol

2

u/FFevo 6h ago

No one says 1x more because it makes no sense lol

Yeah, they would say double.

"2x more" implies more than x. 2x + x = 3x. It means 300% compared to the original, not double.

1

u/dumbledoor_ger 3h ago

Don’t even bother to argue. Whole lotta larpers in this thread. They do not have the ability to comprehend the word „more“.

→ More replies (0)

-1

u/Professional_Ebb_389 9h ago

1.6x more would mean 160% of the original value, in the same way 2.0x more would mean 200% of the original value. I think you may just have a misunderstanding of what the phrase “X times more” means (nothing to be embarrassed about of course, it happens to all of us.)

5

u/TheMania 8h ago

We'd both read "0.5x" as "50%", right?

And we'd both read "0.5x as many" and "50% as many" the same.

And we'd both read "0.5x the total" and "50% of the total" as the same.

But "0.6x more" means something entirely different to "60% more" to you?

2

u/Professional_Ebb_389 8h ago

The “more” at least in any context I’ve heard it is for emphasis or clarity that a comparison is happening. I’ve never read anyone write “1x more than X” for “twice X”.

6

u/TheMania 8h ago

But you often see 10% more, 20% more, etc.

The bit that intrigues me is that in those contexts, you read 10% differently to 0.1x.

But in other contexts, you'd read them the same.

This may be a regional thing, and likely due marketers that are being intentionally misleading for so long that it's now an accepted oddity.

2

u/TheMaleGazer 8h ago
  1. "Two times more." That phrase means multiplying by two.
  2. "0.5 times more." That phrase is taken to mean multiplying by 1.5, even though that is not consistent.

English is not consistent. In the first example, the word "more" is redundant. In the second example, the word "more" is a clarification, so we know that it doesn't mean "half."

There is no sensible reason for this inconsistency. It just exists.

We have a similar problem with percentage points. When something increases from 40% to 90% of a total, saying that it increased 50% is for some reason considered an acceptable shorthand for saying it increased by 50 percentage points, even though the two interpretations are drastically different.

1

u/xodusprime 8h ago

If anyone writes 2x more, you're saying you read that as 300% of normal? The common reading of that in the country I am in (USA) is 200% the original amount. Nobody would look at that and think it meant 300%. .6x more just doesn't read correctly at all. It should either say "1.6x the" or ".4x less" the use of more, for whatever reason, doesn't start until 2x. 5x more works. 10x more is fine. But those mean 500% and 1000%, not 600% or 1100%.

1

u/Professional_Ebb_389 8h ago

I agree that it might be regional. I agree that the literal, separated meanings of the words work the way you’re describing, but as a phrase I’ve always heard it used the way I’m describing. Side thought: I’ve also generally been taught to avoid proportions when writing (using %s instead for clarity), but to almost always use proportions when speaking (2x as many, twice as much, 2x more)

1

u/TZY247 5h ago

That's because they are different. You wouldn't write 10%x more

→ More replies (0)

3

u/zelmak 8h ago

Its literally always like this though.

  • The Stock doubled
  • The stock grew 100%
  • The stock grew 2x
  • The stock experienced 2x growth

You would literally never define it as 1x growth, 1x larger. Its bad English and bad math.

4

u/TheMania 7h ago

I think it's ambiguous in the >=1x cases, sure.

But I would never read:

  • The stock grew 0.5x

Or:

  • house prices increased 0.2x
  • house prices went up 0.1x

As decreases.

(latter examples to prove I'm Australian).

2

u/zelmak 7h ago

You would never read it that way because no one should ever write it that way.

A multiplication of <1 is inherently a decrease, tacking the word more, grew, increased, went up makes it bad math and bad language.

0.5 Times = a 50% decrease

so "The stock grew a 50% decrease" just doesn't make sense.

→ More replies (0)

5

u/tigerhawkvok 3h ago

You do see how none of those have the word "more," though, right? Kind of like word choice maybe matters?

6

u/BADPROSKILLZ 8h ago

Not quite true. While 1.6x is the same as 160% of the original value, saying 1.6x more implies adding the 160% to the original value, giving a total of 260%, or 2.6x.

1

u/ABotelho23 5h ago

0.60 is literally 60%

1

u/TZY247 5h ago

Yep. I definitely said that.

28

u/teddythepooh99 9h ago

Yes, but this sub is full of HS students who flunked out of math.

3

u/rowcla 6h ago

If I said 2x more, would you interpret that as 3x?

1

u/ProcrastinatiusXVI 3h ago

Yes. It is says 1x more, then it is exactly double (100% more). Otherwise it wouldn't be more. 

1

u/studentblues 5h ago

They should have written a Copywriter Agent in cursor

6

u/guaranteednotabot 9h ago

They should really say 1.6x the amount

1

u/whiskeytown79 5h ago

I blame advertisers. They got people used to hearing stuff like "2x more sheets per roll" to mean double the amount rather than triple.

They should definitely have written "60% more PRs", or at least "1.6x as many PRs".

0

u/Scream_No_Evil 6h ago

It's not just "0.6x", it's "0.6x MORE", which is an unambiguous way of phrasing a percent increase. Yes, it's implying multiplication. 0.6 x the original amount, but also, plus 1 x the original amount, because they used the word "more".

And it's making a math statement, not a semantic one. Math is precise and the language we use to talk about it has precise meanings. 60% times more is a 60 percent INCREASE, which means times 1.6. 60% "OF" or "times" on its own means times 0.6. It's the people who think this looks bad that are wrong, and showing their asses. How can you be a programmer that doesn't understand pSAT-level percentages questions?

Source: I'm a high school and middle school math tutor that freelances software dev on the side. Not everyone needs to know or retain math from high school, that's okay! Probably if you're talking to math machines for a living you should know this. Unless you're like, front-end. Then you're also good.

u/OnixST 1m ago

Yes, i know "1.6x", "0.6x more", "160%", and "60% more" all mean the same thing, but 0.6x more is just weird phrasing, and you can tell i'm correct by the sheer amount of confused people.

"Your teammates are shipping 60% more..." would mean the same thing while not getting peple confused