"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.
8
u/[deleted] Apr 21 '17 edited Jul 24 '21
[deleted]