• zloubida@sh.itjust.works
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      1 day ago

      Unless 40.5, 56.5 and 3.5 are themselves additions of rounded numbers. It’s generally how that works.

      • starik@lemmy.zip
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        1 day ago

        Using strongly/somewhat for approve and disapprove:

        39.5 + 0.5 + 55.5 + 0.5 + 3.5 = 99.5

        That could work.

        • TigerAce@lemmy.dbzer0.comOP
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          1 day ago

          39.5 + 0.5

          =40, not 41

          55.5 + 0.5

          =56, not 57

          Its only possible if you round up 40.1 to 41, which is also bad math. When there are 3 variables properly rounded up, you can only have 3x0.5 added.

          • zloubida@sh.itjust.works
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            1 day ago

            What I say is that there is more than three variables. The three variables are already the result of addition of other variables rounded.

            • TigerAce@lemmy.dbzer0.comOP
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              1 day ago

              So there were other options you mean? Like 0.5% couldn’t read, 0.5% drew a picture of a gun instead of answering, etc?

              • idiomaddict@lemmy.world
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                1 day ago

                0.5% strongly approve, rounds up to 1%. 39.5% somewhat approve, rounds up to 40%. The proportion of people who, to varying degrees, approve is then listed as 41%, because otherwise people would see it as them saying 1+40=40.

                People are going to say they don’t understand math either way, so they just need to pick a convention and stick to it.

                • TigerAce@lemmy.dbzer0.comOP
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                  1 day ago

                  Ok, fair enough, yet again you can’t divide the group into smaller groups and by rounding up ending up with a larger group. Percent means per 100. It can never end up being more than 100, except for Trump who is going to reduce medicine prices 1200%. I mean, Americans use weird measurements already, their education system is already fucked and getting worse, I can understand they fail at primary school level math. But this is a British news paper.

          • starik@lemmy.zip
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            1 day ago

            39.5 = 40

            0.5 = 1

            40 + 1 = 41

            ———————-

            55.5 = 56

            0.5 = 1

            56 + 1 = 57

            ———————-

            3.5 = 4

            Since the original 5 numbers only add up to 95.5, you have a leftover 0.5 to distribute between them. After doing so, you would have what could have been the original results before rounding.

            • TigerAce@lemmy.dbzer0.comOP
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              21 hours ago

              Yet this is based on the assumption there were more options, plus the total should still not exceed 100%

              What they should have done was adding up all the combined answers first before rounding up or down, this would make the total 100.

    • KraeuterRoy@feddit.org
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      1 day ago

      The bigliest and bestest President the world has ever seen obviously surpasses the wokist 100% barrier! First to ever do that!