The Velvet Blog: Fun with numbers

Thursday, November 18, 2010

There's a big sticker on the front of my dog Freddie's dry food that reads:

Dogs prefer our new formula by 2-1/2:1!

That half a dog really worries me.

Grammarian@mindspring.com said...: A lot of baseball blogs have gotten into a habit that irritates me. One of stats getting new importance is the ratio of a pitcher's strikeouts to walks. But this gets reported as, for example, "a strikeout to walk ratio of 137/86."

That's not the ratio, or not a useful ratio, because it's not calibrated to be compared with other numbers. That's just the totals with a line between them. Why not just say "137 Ks and 86 BBs"? Or do the math and say a K/BB ratio of 1.59?; 9:36 AM
Jim Donahue said...: I often see constructions along the lines of "Three times less whatever!" Can you be multiple times less of something? That makes no sense to me.

A may have three times more of something that B, but B doesn't have three times less of something than A--right?; 9:58 AM
Jim Donahue said...: Well, the NY Times says I'm being picky: http://nyti.ms/67ArGU; 10:00 AM
Grammarian@mindspring.com said...: I think the Times has 35 times less credibility.; 12:31 PM

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