> like repeating they decreased drugs price by 600%
The NYT and other media outlets like to point out that this claim is mathematically impossible. However, “cut prices by 600%” is understood perfectly well by most people (but not pedants) to mean “we undid price hikes of 600%.”
I suspect that this phrasing was chosen as a “wedge” to drive home to the MAGA faithful that the news media is biased against them.
Does that logic apply only when the claimed cut is over 100%?
If I advertise that my store "cut prices by 50%" but the prices are actually only 33% lower (which is the same as undoing a 50% price hike), would it be pedantic to call me out on my bullshit?
> Does that logic apply only when the claimed cut is over 100%?
Yes, I’d say.
It’s the same as the informal usage of “X times smaller” to describe scaling by 1/X. The idiom generally isn’t used unless X > 1. (The exception might be when several values of X are reported together. Then one might say “0.74 times smaller” to maintain parallel form with nearby “4 times smaller” and similar claims.)
No, it does not conform. As I wrote earlier, I have not seen that usage for less than 100%. So 600% conforms; 50% does not.
That is, expressions like "twice as slow/thin/short/..." or "2x as slow/thin/short/..." or "200% as slow/thin/short/..." have a well-established usage that is understood to mean "half as fast/thick/tall/..."
But "50% as slow/thin/short/..." or "half as slow/thin/short/..." have no such established usage.
For some evidence to support my claim, please see this 2008 discussion on Language Log:
Since HN has a tendency to trim URLs and might prevent this link from taking you to the relevant portion of a rather lengthy article, I'll quote the salent bits:
"A further complexity: in addition to the N times more/larger than usage, there is also a N times less/lower than [to mean] '1/Nth as much as' usage"
"[About this usage, the Merriam-Webster Dictionary of English Usage reports that] times has now been used in such constructions for about 300 years, and there is no evidence to suggest that it has ever been misunderstood."
I believe that the history of English language usage is replete with examples such as "X times less than" when X > 1, but similar constructions for X <= 1 do not appear with appreciable frequency.
In any case, I think that continuing our conversation is unlikely to be productive, so this will be my last reply.
I will just say in closing that our conversation is a good example of why the MAGA folks have probably chosen phrasing such as this.
> like repeating they decreased drugs price by 600%
The NYT and other media outlets like to point out that this claim is mathematically impossible. However, “cut prices by 600%” is understood perfectly well by most people (but not pedants) to mean “we undid price hikes of 600%.”
I suspect that this phrasing was chosen as a “wedge” to drive home to the MAGA faithful that the news media is biased against them.