On: The computers are fast, but you don't know it

[Panzer04]

"faster" vs "reduced time". Many people confuse rate of work with reduction in time, and it's exceptionally annoying :(

[necovek → Panzer04]

But it's not only that. Nothing can be improved to be 119% faster either. Maybe the new result makes the old one 119% slower.

It's about language use and what of are those per-cents (per-hundredths).

[gilbetron → necovek]

If I travel 25 miles in 1 hour, my speed was 25mph. If I go 100% faster, I'm going 50mph and get there in 30 minutes. If I go 200% faster, I'm going 75mph and get there in 20 minutes.

However, the original statement of "We have reduced the time for the computation by ~119%!" is still wrong-seeming, I agree. It should be "We have increased the speed for the computation by 119%" or "We have reduced the time for the computation by <WHATEVER>" :)

[necovek → gilbetron]

Language is, as you nicely point out, very tricky.

Yeah, when talking of speed, you can clearly go more than 100% faster.

But when talking of something taking a certain amount of time, like done in most benchmarks, it can't be made more than 100% faster.

[gilbetron → necovek]

You can because when you say 100% faster, it is referring to speed, and so you convert to speed than calculate time from that. Language matters :)

[hinkley → gilbetron]

> We have reduced the time for the computation by ~119%!

You can say 100% faster when you are talking about speed. You can't say 100% faster when you are talking about duration. "Reduced the time" is talking about duration.

[pindab0ter → Panzer04]

Bonus points if the 'speed is faster'.

[necovek → pindab0ter]

That one might not be strictly correct (speed is greater), but it's at least non-ambiguous and understandable.

I love me some of those "discount -50%" signs though.

[hinkley → pindab0ter]

Oh, but we let people say "acceleration is faster". It's like we've reserved 'faster' for a single derivative and banned it for all the others.

[pindab0ter → hinkley]

I don't think it's about banning words at all. It's about words making sense.

"What's cheaper? The price is." Now that just doesn't make any sense, since a price isn't cheap or expensive, it's high or low. The thing that is priced can be cheap or expensive, but that's not what's being said.

"What's faster? The speed is." Doesn't make sense either. Speed isn't fast, the speedy thing is. However, "What's faster? The acceleration is." is fine, because you can have slow or fast acceleration (I think?).

I'm an ESL speaker, so please do tell me if I'm wrong and how.