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- Path: sparky!uunet!olivea!mintaka.lcs.mit.edu!mintaka!rjbodkin
- From: rjbodkin@theory.lcs.mit.edu (Ronald Bodkin)
- Newsgroups: comp.programming
- Subject: Re: 400% makes sense
- Message-ID: <RJBODKIN.92Jul25162546@laennec.lcs.mit.edu>
- Date: 25 Jul 92 21:25:46 GMT
- References: <1992Jul25.171314.22419@uwm.edu> <1992Jul25.184259.20358@a.cs.okstate.edu>
- Sender: news@mintaka.lcs.mit.edu
- Organization: MIT Lab for Computer Science
- Lines: 11
- In-Reply-To: norman@a.cs.okstate.edu's message of 25 Jul 92 18:42:59 GMT
-
- In article <1992Jul25.184259.20358@a.cs.okstate.edu> norman@a.cs.okstate.edu (Norman Graham) writes:
- Not exactly. 400% is a nonsensical term. Percent (%) means 'per hundred' or
- 'of each hundred', and thus is only meaningful for values between 0 and
- 100 (inclusive). Percent is best used for absolute measurements, rather
- than relative comparisons such as the above example.
-
- Rational numbers are defined for values greater than one.
- This "argument" is as silly as saying 7/3 makes no sense, because it
- is seven thirds, and you cannot have more than three thirds of a
- whole.
- Ron
-