One hundred and ten percent..!

[MrGeresHamster]

AIBU that my skin crawls everytime I hear someone say 'one thousand percent', 'one hundred and ten percent' and all other impossible use of mathematical percentages...?

Absolutely. I don't know what is being taught at school now. 100% is good enough, always has been.

you only hear it on jeremy kyle along with them saying they are 70/30 % on who the babies dad is I thought it would be 50/50 between 2 men ,

mchappy - a statistical average does not need to be a whole number, it is a reflection of the normal expected for the statistical sample.

Mrsjay unless they know there cycle length

Mrsjay unless they know there cycle length

some of them dont know what day of the week they are on never mind counting their cycle

Ok, since this obviously a pedanty thread:

mchappy, NO, 110% is not necessarily 'above average'. It has no relation to 'average'. If we're asking how much everyone's daily commute changes when a road closes, for example, it could well be most people's commute lengthens by 170% and only the lucky few are able to take a shortcut and find it's longer by 110%. In this situation, 110% would be under average.

In short, percentages and averages do not necessarily have anything the fuck to do with each other.

(Oh dear, I worry about myself.)

Ok, because I don't watch JK, I've never come across the 70/30 thing and it made me cackle like a hen! Brilliant!

McHappy is either a troll or a 16 year old aiming for grade G at GCSE. Sigh.

Very true mrs jay :)

?!

Erm ... is this a sufficiently serious thread to be troll-hunting on? I try to avoid those.

Mchappy isnt a troll LRD it is very funny

My first troll accusation. Psssst it's the summer holidays and gcse are done and 16 year olds are awaiting results

YANBU, makes my teeth itch when people say they give 110%!

I fully understand the fact that, in the correct context 110% can be correct, e.g. in context of a price rise, but I can't help but think of the person as ignorant if they think that they can give more than ALL of their effort!

Is the problem the general lack of mathematical knowledge in society?

What makes my skin crawl is that it is considered normal not to understand these concepts, acceptable even?

every time i see trol on here I think people are sitting at their computers with pink sticky up hair

( my favourite troll had pink hair and i loved it )

TBH maths was never my strong point at school ,

I once had a colleague whose made her job description - you know the sort of thing, filing 30%, staring out of window 40%, etc etc - add up to 110%, to show (she said) that hers was a busy job.

I agree that the issue here is that people take a perverse pride in being innumerate.

I am slightly tempted to watch JK now.

And they say Mumsnet is the highbrow networking site!

Thank god I'm not on netmums.

mrgere - isn't it more than lots of people understand the concepts, but not how to say them? Still annoying, but their maths might be ok when they thought about it.

LRD yes, possibly so. Does that then display a laziness in self expression?

The question was posed lightheartedly and I will go to sleep happy knowing I'm not alone in my pedancy...

Maybe so.

Solidarity in pedantry!

(I am worried now this sounds rather like a Soviet slogan, but anyway, night night.)

Actually I think YABU to be wound up about it. It's very obviously an exaggeration for dramatic effect, and IMO the majority of people saying "I gave it 150%" know perfectly well that this is literally impossible. It's a figure of speech.

My DD, when asked what marks out of ten she'll give a film will often say 11, in the manner of Nigel Tufnel: unlike him she fully understands that it's just a dramatic flourish. When I complain that I walked up and down Oxford Street seventeen times searching for the perfect pair of shoes to match my pitfit I may in fact have only gone up and down twice. My lack of accuracy is not because I can't count.

It is just an expression. The fact that it is mathematically incorrect is intended to get the point across more forcefully (although it seems the expression is now overused).

That is why people say 110% rather than 200% or 420%, because they only need that 10% to make it illogical enough to get the point across. Because they actually KNOW it is wrong.

And who wants to live in the perfect world.

I love different expressions and quotes.

I'm definitely in pedants corner when it comes to this 110 per cent effort nonsense. I rant about this to anyone who will listen (usually just the dog)

"I will go to sleep happy knowing I'm not alone in my pedancy..."

Um... shouldn't it be 'pedantry'?