On Wed, 23 May 2012 14:20:03 +0000, Bill Fairchild wrote:
>And the general public, many Dilbertian managers, and even some of us
>professional nitpickers, think that a job running 1 hour instead of 10 is 900%
>faster,
>
I believe that's correct usage, even as an airplane that flies from
New York to Washington in one hour is 900% faster than a car
that makes the trip in 10 hours.
>and that 1 is 10 times smaller than 10.
>
And that's confusing or nonsensical. But see: e.g.:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Markedness#Marked_and_unmarked_word_pairs
http://www.springerlink.com/content/u15776721t318p8u/
Does "24/7" sometimes presume an exception for national holidays?
Why is it "24/7" rather than "24x7"? And why do markets display
prices such as "3/$1.00" rather than "$1.00/3"?
Is chartreuse about 50% greener than olive?
Now, can we get back to our charter of discussing the appropriate use of TLAs?
-- gil
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