Fifty Fifty

[TinselBaublesMistletoe]

Does this bother anyone else as much as it does me?

For example an episode of The 4400 I just watched was called Fifty Fifty because half the people who took a certain drug die and the other half have a really good effect. I was glad I was watching it because I let out a pained squeal each time someone said it!

This side of maths isn't my strong point so I'm not too good at explaining why it's so wrong, hopefully someone else can, but fifty fifty isn't 50% it means that something is guaranteed. In the case The 4400 either you are guaranteed to die or guaranteed to have a good effect, depending what they were talking about at the time.

eh?
Explain it so that I can be annoyed too in the future!

The one that gets me is 'decimate' - which people seem to use to mean 9 out of 10 die, rather than what it really meant: 1 in 10 died.

I thought 50/50 meant you have an equal chance of either outcome, ie 50%

That's what i thought.

Fifty fifty is odds, it's the same as one one. If you were to put £50 down, you'd get £50 back because the bet was guaranteed. I think I've explained it right

Hopefully someone more mathematical will explain it better than me.

Erm... I'm glad I was watching it?

"I'm glad I had headphones on when I was watching it".

D'oh

X-post

50/50 is the same as 1/1 or a whole.

A 50/ 50 scenario has two possible outcomes and means that you have a 50% change of each outcome happening, i.e an exactly equal change of each.

But I'd never say one one, or two one, I'd say two TO one, or twenty TO one, the to being the : in the mathematical ratio.

I don't think it's odds, I think its proportions. So you can have a 20/80 split in probabilities, or a 50/50 split, or whatever numbers add up to the full 100%

Fifty fifty split is not odds of 50/50, it's odds of 1/2

50% chance of outcome A and 50% chance of outcome B

I'm pretty certain 50:50 means exactly what they were describing in the TV programme i.e. what cestlavie said.

well I'd take it as evens, so fifty fifty means it could go either way. (am probably mixing my gambling metaphors but YKWIM)

Here you go...

?adjective

1. equally good and bad, likely and unlikely, favorable and unfavorable, etc.: a fifty-fifty chance of winning.

?adverb

1. in an evenly or equally divided way: The board voted fifty-fifty on the merger.

?Idiom

1. go fifty-fifty (on), to share equally in the cost, responsibility, or profits (of): We went fifty-fifty on the dinner check.

Also, 50-50.

Origin:
1910?15, Americanism
Dictionary.com Unabridged (v 1.1)
Based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2006.

The TV program is right and you're wrong, OP, and you're wrong in pedant's corner of all places

evens!

Thanks dickens, that was the word I was looking for

I thought it meant an equal chance too

Don't know where you got that meaning from OP but I've never heard 50/50 meaning that.

Also with odds you always use the simplest fraction so it would never be 50-50, the notable exceptions of course being 100-30 and 6-4 .