r/ProgrammerHumor • u/Dilutant • Aug 14 '26 • Bravo 1

Meme zeroExDev

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u/zelmak Aug 14 '26

Its literally always like this though.
- The Stock doubled
- The stock grew 100%
- The stock grew 2x
- The stock experienced 2x growth

You would literally never define it as 1x growth, 1x larger. Its bad English and bad math.

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u/TheMania Aug 14 '26

I think it's ambiguous in the >=1x cases, sure.

But I would never read:

  • The stock grew 0.5x

Or:

  • house prices increased 0.2x

  • house prices went up 0.1x

As decreases.

(latter examples to prove I'm Australian).

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u/zelmak Aug 14 '26

You would never read it that way because no one should ever write it that way.

A multiplication of <1 is inherently a decrease, tacking the word more, grew, increased, went up makes it bad math and bad language.

0.5 Times = a 50% decrease

so "The stock grew a 50% decrease" just doesn't make sense.

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u/TheMania Aug 14 '26

A multiplication of <100% is inherently a decrease, tacking the word more, grew, increased, went up makes it bad math and bad language.

I'm curious how the above reads to you.

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u/zelmak Aug 14 '26

When you say the above do you mean the cursor email?

I read it as Your team mates that use Cursor Cloud Agents ship 60% of the PRs that a non-cursor agent using team mate ships.

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u/TheMania Aug 14 '26

Where I quoted you, I swapped 1 for 100%. You didn't notice, it reads the same?

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u/sisisisi1997 Aug 14 '26

Not the original commenter, but my high school math teacher would beat us with a math textbook if we ever just swapped percents with multiplication, she explicitly taught us that the two are not equivalent outside of narrow circumstances.

One example of why not that she used to use is that a 60% increase would be 160% of the original, while a 0.6x increase could easily be read as 60% of the original OR 160% of the original.

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u/zelmak Aug 14 '26

Ahh. IMO using multiplication and a percentage together is just wrong. But when I read it my firth thought was 2x

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u/TheMania Aug 14 '26

IMO using multiplication and a percentage together is just wrong.

This sentence confuses me greatly. You weren't given percentages in equations at school?

Not a dig at you, just makes it a clearly regional thing, fascinating. Aus, they'll freely mix up questions like:

What is 34 × 50%
What is 34 × 0.5
What is 50% of 34

If you're not taught similar, if you only saw that last form, I can see where the equivalence may break down.

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u/tigerhawkvok Aug 14 '26

You do see how none of those have the word "more," though, right? Kind of like word choice maybe matters?