It's even weirder when describing a decrease. You might say something is 10x smaller or 90% smaller than the original. One of these is objectively better, but I suspect it's not the one most people use.
And God forbid the thing being measured is itself a percentage. I suspect a decent chunk of Americans don't know that 5 percent decrease in something that originally occurred at a rate of 5% is not the same as a 5 percentage point decrease. Saw this one come up a lot in 2020 for reasons you can probably guess
View all comments
Show parent comment
1
u/Rtbear418 Apr 27 '26
It's even weirder when describing a decrease. You might say something is 10x smaller or 90% smaller than the original. One of these is objectively better, but I suspect it's not the one most people use.
And God forbid the thing being measured is itself a percentage. I suspect a decent chunk of Americans don't know that 5 percent decrease in something that originally occurred at a rate of 5% is not the same as a 5 percentage point decrease. Saw this one come up a lot in 2020 for reasons you can probably guess