• ricecake@sh.itjust.works
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    10 hours ago

    A percentage is a dimensionless number, but percent is still a unit. Just think about how you use it. Something can increase by 5 students, or it can increase by 15%.

    Regardless, is “m” standing for a concrete measure and ”%” for a proportional one really the source of since confusion and anger? What about db, or decibel? It’s a measure of the ratio of quantities on a logarithmic scale, and is regularly applied to sound, electricity and other values. Is it as confusing?

    • lunarul@lemmy.world
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      40 minutes ago

      In all your examples, k is a prefix to the unit. You can have 1 km, or 1 kdB. But there’s no such thing as a kilopercent and that’s not how it was used in the title. It was the common informal shortening of 1000 to 1k. So it wasn’t 1(k%), it was (1k)%. Which is an odd combination. It’s not confusing, everyone understood what was meant, but it’s still stupid and unnecessary.