the.com/percentage
a slice of the whole pretending to be the whole truth
means A portion or share of something expressed as a fraction of one hundred.
from From the Latin per centum, 'by the hundred' — the merchant's and tax-collector's phrase for reckoning per each hundred units. It came into English through Italian commercial math, where bankers and accountants of the late medieval and Renaissance trading world tallied interest and profit in hundredths. 'Percent' arrived first; 'percentage' followed as the noun for the amount itself, with the suffix '-age' (the same one in 'mileage' and 'postage') marking 'an amount measured by.'
- latin roots
- From per centum, meaning by the hundred
- misleading stat
- 100% of percentages can be statistically weaponized
- over 100
- Percentages can exceed 100 and routinely do
- symbol origin
- The % sign evolved from abbreviating per cento
batting average — measure of baseball hits divided by at-bats, e.g., ted williams .406 in 1941
inflation rate — annual price increase, e.g., us inflation 9.1% in june 2022
unemployment rate — share of workforce without jobs, e.g., us 3.5% in 2023
market share — company sales as portion of industry, e.g., apple 16% of global smartphone market in 2023