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From: Chris Croughton <chris@keristor.net>
Newsgroups: alt.languages.english
Subject: Re: question about expression for percentage
Date: Mon, 2 Jan 2006 21:11:27 +0000
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On Sun, 1 Jan 2006 01:59:53 -0600, John61
<wanghaodong@yahoo.com> wrote:
> For an alternative to "increased from 95% to 98%",
>
> we sure cannot say "increased by 3% (percent)" as this expression is
> relative.
Actually in common usage (as in newspapers, radio and TV news stories)
people very often do say, incorrectly, "increased by 3%".in the case you
give there is little difference (3% of 95% is 2.85%), but an increase of
3% from 10% to 13% is a lot different from an increase of 10%.
> but what word can we use for the absolute increase? "increase by 3 ???"
In finance when talking about interest etc. the term used is "percentage
points" or often just "points" ("the stock is down 3 points from
yesterday").
As a former mathematician the situation is often even worse. "Inflation
is up by 1%" is talking about a second derivative, the rate of increase
of a rate of increase, but politicians often use it as a figure in its
own right. Several countries have claimed things like a decsrease in
the unemployment rate -- the actual number of people unemployed was
still rising, but the rate at which they were becoming unemployed was
reducing -- as a decrease "in unemployment".
Chris C
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