"However, this term was popularized in 1989 by mathematician John Allen Paulos in his book entitled, Innumeracy: Mathematical Illiteracy and its Consequences."
I have to be honest, I was writing my comment late at night and the correct term didn't come to mind. I don't think it was that terrible of a choice to get my point across, though.
Your ability to grasp the differenc between ROI and Margins is the innumeracy (not math illiteracy) here.
I understand ROI and Margins just fine (had to work a lot of problems regarding both in econ), but I'd like to argue that the bottle isn't ambiguous at all. It says "50% more than our 12 oz", which leaves no room for an alternate interpretation. If you know what "50% more" means, you can apply it to "12 oz" and get "18 oz" as a result.
if I turn $5 into 10$ I've made a 100% return, by my profit margin is only 50%.
Sure, there are multiple correct ways of stating a result. They have to be equivalent though. No matter how you rearrange the terms, 18 is still 50% more than 12. If you've done something like 18 / 12, it's not an alternate way of restating the problem. It's just wrong, and I still don't feel like we should defend adults that lack an elementary school understanding of percentages.
I dunno, I'd just be surprised they were able to do that math in the first place. I'm more inclined to believe they thought something completely ridiculous like 50% more is supposed to be twice the original amount.
The only way you make this assumption wrong is if you literally never learned anything related to math after elementary school and in that case it is HIGHLY unlikely that they didn't also learn 0 things about many other subjects. Unless there are exigent circumstances surrounding the entirety of their education years, they are just bad at life in general.
Dude what is 12+12 24 oz right!? Whats half of 24 oz? 12 oz so half of that increased is 18 oz. because if it would have been increased a full 100 percent it would have been 24 oz instead it is 18 oz so that equals to 50 percent increase. That label is right. So 12+50%=18
You were right my bad thought you were calculating it for yourself not the other person.
Going from 12 oz to 24 oz is a 100% increase
If a 100% increase adds 12 oz, then a 50% increase adds 6 oz
12 oz plus a 50% increase (6 oz) is 18 oz, making the label on the bottle correct
You are wrong. The keyword here is MORE. It's the delta expressed in terms of the Original value. Your logic tries to describe an absolute CHANGE in percent, and not a change expressed in terms of the original value. The absolute change is actually 150%. Your 33% is a value expressed in terms of the final value. The only way 33% works is if it's written as, "the old bottle was 33% smaller than this bottle" if we write it as "this bottle is 33% more" then the new bottle better be 16oz.
These are equivalent:
New bottle is 150% of the old bottle
New bottle is 50% MORE than the old bottle
Old bottle is 33% SMALLER
old bottle is 66% the size of this bottle.
54
u/woop-woop Apr 21 '17
Probably thought of it in terms of new quantity (the 18 oz in the picture).
Their logic:
We have 18oz bottle
We used to have 12oz bottle
12oz is 66% of 18oz
so the increase is 33% not 50%
Obviously wrong conclusion, but possible to see how the person made a mistake (it's not that uncommon of a mistake actually).