Re: 100%

From: René Scharfe <rene.scharfe@lsrfire.ath.cx>
Date: Jun 23, 2007, 10:18 UTC
Message-ID: <467CF380.6060603@lsrfire.ath.cx>
In-Reply-To: <Pine.LNX.4.64.0706230222330.4059@racer.site>

Johannes Schindelin schrieb:

Show 11 quoted lines

> On Fri, 22 Jun 2007, David Kastrup wrote:
>> The people I know will expect "100% identical" or even "100.0% 
>> identical" to mean identical, period.  They will be quite surprised to 
>> hear that "99.95%" is supposed to be included.
> 
> Granted, 100.0% means as close as you can get to "completely" with 4 
> digits. But if you have an integer, you better use the complete range, 
> rather than arbitrarily make one number more important than others.
> 
> For if you see an integer, you usually assume a rounded value. If you 
> don't, you're hopeless.

Why hopeless? It's a useful convention to define "100%" as "complete (not rounded)". See it this way: 50% of the time, a given percent value will be shown as one point less than it's "true" value, but you gain the ability to indicate full completeness. And that's an interesting piece of information. The price is small given that the needed accuracy is more in the range of 10 percent points (I assume).

It's more a question of how to make sure everybody knows what the numbers mean -- but that's why we have a directory named "Documentation". :-D And even a person that hasn't read the docs is unlikely to really get harmed by inexact percentages, right?

René