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Re:Is the world economy entering a wage-price spiral? by seanmcdirmid on Tuesday October 19, 2021 @10:39PM (#28926158)
Yes, the same trick can be used when writing a scientific paper: "we improve process X's accuracy by 150%!" (when the base is 1% accurate, it is now 2.5% accurate).
Re:Is the world economy entering a wage-price spiral? by ajit_singh on Wednesday October 20, 2021 @03:38AM (#28927861)
This trick is used all the time. In my previous SaaS company we used to write case studies to show the impact caused by our product on the business' bottomline. A typical impact used to be like conversion increased from 10% to 12%. However, this impact used to seem very tiny and absolutely not case study worthy.

Hence, we would deliberately calculate impact by taking not the previous sales but the previous conversion rate as the denominator. Thus, would 10 to 12% growth would go like "we increased Y's conversion rate by 20%."

Can't be mathematically disputed and totally clickbaity at the same time.

Re:Is the world economy entering a wage-price spiral? by sokoloff on Wednesday October 20, 2021 @04:05AM (#28928034)
In that case, it’s not particularly misleading. All else equal, I’d expect an increase of 20% of sales, not an increase of 2%. Sure, a clarifying footnote/endnote would be nice.