two-tenths of a percentage point
ZhangJ...@gmail.com
"New orders for manufactured goods in the U.S. grew two-tenths of a
percentage point in February"
What does "two-tenths of a percentage point " mean, 2% or 0.2%?
Skitt
D. Spencer Hines
2% is two percentage points.
DSH
Lux et Veritas et Libertas
<ZhangJ...@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:1143852109.1...@i39g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...
Stephen Calder
A percentage point is a difference or change of one per cent, for
example, the difference between 10 per cent and 11 per cent, or the
change from 98 per cent to 99 per cent.
Two-tenths of a percentage point means a difference or change of 0.2 per
cent, for example the difference between 10.0 per cent and 10.2 per cent
or the difference between 67.4 per cent and 67.6 per cent.
Note that there is a big difference in meaning between a percentage
point and one per cent. If the level of water in a dam changes from 60
per cent full to 61 per cent full it has moved a percentage point but
the change is more than one per cent from the previous level.
--
Stephen
Lennox Head, Australia
ZhangJ...@gmail.com
Mark Brader
>> "New orders for manufactured goods in the U.S. grew two-tenths of a
>> percentage point in February"
>>
>> What does "two-tenths of a percentage point " mean, 2% or 0.2%?
Stephen Calder:
> A percentage point is a difference or change of one per cent, for
> example, the difference between 10 per cent and 11 per cent, or the
> change from 98 per cent to 99 per cent.
>
> Two-tenths of a percentage point means a difference or change of 0.2 per
> cent, for example the difference between 10.0 per cent and 10.2 per cent
> or the difference between 67.4 per cent and 67.6 per cent.
Correct. Which means that the original sentence is badly written. The
normal way to write it would be with something like "grew by 0.2%" (or
some longer form such as "grew by two-tenths of one percent" -- this is
perhaps more common in spoken use, for the sake of clarity).
The only reason to bring in "percentage points" is when you're talking
about a change from one percentage value to another, as in Stephen's
second paragraph.
--
Mark Brader, Toronto | I still remember the first time his reality check
m...@vex.net | bounced. -- Darlene Richards
My text in this article is in the public domain.
Joe Fineman
Properly, neither; but here 0.2% is a good guess.
The idiom "percentage point" is properly used in connection with
numbers that are themselves percentages. A legitimate example (and
one that shows why we need such an expression) is, say,
The rate of unemployment rose from 5.0% to 5.4% in the last
quarter, an increase of 0.4 percentage point, or 8%.
Orders for U.S. goods are presumably measured in dollars, so a
parallel example might be
New orders for manufactured goods in the U.S. grew from
$1,000,000,000 to $1,002,000,000 in February, an increase of
$2,000,000, or 0.2%.
The person quoted probably thought "percentage point" sounded more
impressive.
--
--- Joe Fineman jo...@verizon.net
||: Don't worry. It won't last. Nothing does. :||
R H Draney
>
>Note that there is a big difference in meaning between a percentage
>point and one per cent. If the level of water in a dam changes from 60
>per cent full to 61 per cent full it has moved a percentage point but
>the change is more than one per cent from the previous level.
I need to see about getting little cards printed up explaining this, since I
seem to have to go through the whole speech a couple of times a week....r
--
We are the parents our people warned us about.
D. Spencer Hines
.2%
2% is two percentage points.
DSH
Lux et Veritas et Libertas
<ZhangJ...@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:1143852109.1...@i39g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...
>
Jonathan Morton
news:uhd5ed...@verizon.net...
> The idiom "percentage point" is properly used in connection with
> numbers that are themselves percentages. A legitimate example (and
> one that shows why we need such an expression) is, say,
>
> The rate of unemployment rose from 5.0% to 5.4% in the last
> quarter, an increase of 0.4 percentage point, or 8%.
In the banking community they talk about "basis points" for similar
reasons - 100 basis points being 1% IIRC.
Regards
Jonathan
HVS
> Stephen Calder filted:
>>
>> Note that there is a big difference in meaning between a
>> percentage point and one per cent. If the level of water in a
>> dam changes from 60 per cent full to 61 per cent full it has
>> moved a percentage point but the change is more than one per
>> cent from the previous level.
>
> I need to see about getting little cards printed up explaining
> this, since I seem to have to go through the whole speech a
> couple of times a week....r
I've seen people in pubs who seem to be under the impression that
switching from a beer at 3.5% ABV to one that's 4.5% ABV only
increases their alcohol intake by 1%.
--
Cheers, Harvey
Canadian and British English, indiscriminately mixed
For e-mail, change harvey.news to harvey.van
R H Draney
>
>I've seen people in pubs who seem to be under the impression that
>switching from a beer at 3.5% ABV to one that's 4.5% ABV only
>increases their alcohol intake by 1%.
It does, if they've already reenacted [1] all the verses of "Ninety-Nine
Bottles" first....r
[1] add this word to the "eleemosynary" list
Ray
wrote:
You do indeed RC. But basis points are used only in referring to
interest rates or yields, in my experience. They wouldn't be applied
to other things that are expressed in percentages.
--
Ray
(remove the Xs to reply)
Hedberg
<pogue...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>Recte:
>
>.2%
>
>2% is two percentage points.
>
>DSH
>
Only for particular cases. The difference between 2% and 4% is "2
percentage points," but it most certainly is _not_ a 2% difference.
davidal...@gmail.com
Mark Brader
> 0.9
The question was asked 12 years ago. The answer is wrong.
--
Mark Brader | "And it's a moment in which there has never been
Toronto | a bigger ocean of [alphabet] soup from which
m...@vex.net | to draw letters." --Philip Bump
Peter Moylan
> David Allen:
>> 0.9
>
> The question was asked 12 years ago. The answer is wrong.
--
Peter Moylan http://www.pmoylan.org
Newcastle, NSW, Australia