Bad math in the press

The number of vegan restaurants in Japan increased from 400 to 1000 from 2018 to 2020.

The vegan press calls that a "60% increase".

I can see how they went wrong, but damn.

150% increase, but what do I know?

More than the writers at VegNews.

I think we've discussed this before, but it's tricky about whether to refer to it as 150% or 250%. What language is suitable for each figure?

I'd take this blooper with a grain of salt... if salt is vegan.

It looks to me that the headline doesn't match the copy in the article but the copy in the article is so short it makes me wonder if the headline came from copy that was edited out.

Clearly some editor should have caught this.

I'm more interested in how the error happened.

I deal with numbers and percentages all the time writing about tax laws. The latest story is about the growth of tax evasion and the percentages include multiple years so there is plenty of room for errors.

Quote: MichaelBluejay

More than the writers at VegNews.

I think we've discussed this before, but it's tricky about whether to refer to it as 150% or 250%. What language is suitable for each figure?
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MichaelBluejay,

1. "The number of vegan restaurants has increased 150% from 2018 to 2020." The key here is that this mentions specifically the change (in thus case, the increase) in the number relative to the.original number.

2. "The number of vegan restaurants in 2020 was 250% of its 2018 value." Here, the percentage refers to the ratio of (new #)/(old #) rather than the change.

This is similar to the difference in saying "5 for 2" vs. "3 to 2" when discussing the return for a natural in blackjack: the first is return/wager, where "return" = winnings + wager, while the second is winnings/wager.

Hope this helps!

Dog Hand

Thanks, DogHand.

I checked and I was right, we did discuss this before.