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- Newsgroups: comp.programming
- Path: sparky!uunet!mcsun!sun4nl!utrcu1!infnews!infnews!stadt
- From: stadt@cs.utwente.nl (Richard van de Stadt)
- Subject: Re: 400% makes sense
- Message-ID: <1992Jul27.163510@cs.utwente.nl>
- Sender: usenet@cs.utwente.nl
- Nntp-Posting-Host: utis146
- Organization: University of Twente, Dept. of Computer Science
- References: <1992Jul25.171314.22419@uwm.edu> <1992Jul25.184259.20358@a.cs.okstate.edu>
- Date: Mon, 27 Jul 1992 14:35:10 GMT
- Lines: 28
-
- In article <1992Jul25.184259.20358@a.cs.okstate.edu>, norman@a.cs.okstate.edu (Norman Graham) writes:
- |> From article <1992Jul25.171314.22419@uwm.edu>, by markh@csd4.csd.uwm.edu (Mark William Hopkins):
- |> > 20,000,000 operations/second is 400% of 5,000,000 operations/second.
- |> >
- |> > Case closed.
- |>
- |> 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.
- |>
- |> The use of percent in relative comparisons naturally leads to subtle
- |> misunderstandings. Thus its best to say something like "machine A
- |> (at 20 M op/sec) is four times as fast as machine B (at 5 M op/sec)."
-
- This might still lead to subtle misunderstandings, because some people might find
- that machine A is only three times as fast as machine B (5 + 3*5 = 20)
- But then again, maybe it would be three times faster, not as fast as.
- That is, if I don't misunderstand :-)
-
- |> --
- |> Norman Graham
- |> <norman@a.cs.okstate.edu> Standard Disclaimer Applies
-
- Richard
- --
- R.R. van de Stadt ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ stadt@cs.utwente.nl
- Usually I use vi instead of xedit:wq
-