Re: Is 70ms 14 or 12% faster than 80ms ?

[Dirk Laurie <dirk.laurie@...>]

2018-05-16 9:34 GMT+02:00 Tim Hill <drtimhill@gmail.com>:
>
>
> On May 15, 2018, at 11:12 PM, Dirk Laurie <dirk.laurie@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> When I say that a program is "X% times faster" than another it means
> that it runs in % less time. (A program 100% faster would take no time
> to run).  When I say that a program is "X% times slower" than another
> I mean that the other is % faster.  (A program 50% slower means that
> it takes twice the time).
>
>
> That tells you precisely how the the terms "faster" and "slower" are
> used _in that article_, in order to avoid misunderstanding by readers
> whose usage may be different.
>
>
> … except he *defines* the phrase “X% times faster” but then *uses* the
> phrase “100% faster” and not “100% times faster”.
>
> I’m not entirely sure “X% times faster” is a good choice. What is “10% times
> faster” supposed to mean? It certainly *doesnt* mean “10% faster”, nor does
> it mean “1/10th times faster”.

Aha. Humpty Dumpty (the famous quote on what words mean)  is not
enough for this discussion. We need the White Knight too (the nice
distinctions on what the song is, what it is called, what its title is,
and what the title of the song is called).

Moreover, didn't Lewis Carroll in his alter ego as C.L.Dodgson, that
eristic algebraist and logician, say something about precisely the
topic of "times faster" and "times as fast as"?

I'll have to re-read Curiousa Mathematica :-)