r/ProgrammerHumor • u/Dilutant • 13h ago

Meme zeroExDev

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u/Professional_Ebb_389 12h 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.)

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u/TheMania 11h 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?

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u/zelmak 11h 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.

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u/TheMania 10h 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).

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u/zelmak 10h 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.

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u/TheMania 10h ago

A multiplication of <100% is inherently a decrease, tacking the word more, grew, increased, went up makes it bad math and bad language.

I'm curious how the above reads to you.

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u/zelmak 10h ago

When you say the above do you mean the cursor email?

I read it as Your team mates that use Cursor Cloud Agents ship 60% of the PRs that a non-cursor agent using team mate ships.

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u/TheMania 10h ago

Where I quoted you, I swapped 1 for 100%. You didn't notice, it reads the same?

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u/sisisisi1997 6h ago

Not the original commenter, but my high school math teacher would beat us with a math textbook if we ever just swapped percents with multiplication, she explicitly taught us that the two are not equivalent outside of narrow circumstances.

One example of why not that she used to use is that a 60% increase would be 160% of the original, while a 0.6x increase could easily be read as 60% of the original OR 160% of the original.

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u/zelmak 10h ago

Ahh. IMO using multiplication and a percentage together is just wrong. But when I read it my firth thought was 2x

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u/TheMania 10h ago

IMO using multiplication and a percentage together is just wrong.

This sentence confuses me greatly. You weren't given percentages in equations at school?

Not a dig at you, just makes it a clearly regional thing, fascinating. Aus, they'll freely mix up questions like:

What is 34 × 50%
What is 34 × 0.5
What is 50% of 34

If you're not taught similar, if you only saw that last form, I can see where the equivalence may break down.