• JoeyHarrington@lemmy.ca
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        18 hours ago

        Because it’s a stupid, non standard way to say it. I understood it fine but I still thought it was a needless abbreviation.

        • morbidcactus@lemmy.ca
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          2 hours ago

          Formatting of the number changes the way people interpret it. Which looks larger from a quick glance 1k or 1,000? You’re 1h% correct, it’s totally needless, makes it less clear and honestly was probably done intentionally.

        • P1nkman@lemmy.world
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          14 hours ago

          K = kilo, which stands for 1000. It’s extremely standard. Saying it’s stupid is like saying $ or π or & or # or % is stupid.

            • Aceticon@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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              3 hours ago

              It’s literally the stupidest possible way to write it

              Nah.

              For example:

              “UnitedHealth overcharged cancer patients for drugs by over 1,000,000,000μ%”

              would be even more stupid and I’m sure using something else than base-10 would yield its very own class of stupid.

              Stupidity is probably boundless.

            • ricecake@sh.itjust.works
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              16 hours ago

              Okay. I don’t typically get that caught up in the formatting of a number if the meaning is clear. 1k means 1000 in basically every context, and a unit indicator doesn’t make it more confusing to me. Are you likewise baffled by something being written as “1km”?

              • jeffw@lemmy.worldM
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                3 hours ago

                I have literally never seen k used in percentages before. Km is common, as is using it if you’re writing out LARGE numerical values (10k or above).

                I’m not saying it’s difficult to understand. I’m saying it looks stupid.

                • ricecake@sh.itjust.works
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                  3 hours ago

                  Alright. And you felt the need to express that you thought it looked stupid to a person saying the meaning was clear to them, so they weren’t upset?

                  Do you get why someone might think the meaning wasn’t clear?

                  If it was your first time seeing the prefix used that way, and the meaning was immediately clear despite not being your style, why do you care?

                • ricecake@sh.itjust.works
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                  13 hours ago

                  A percentage is a dimensionless number, but percent is still a unit. Just think about how you use it. Something can increase by 5 students, or it can increase by 15%.

                  Regardless, is “m” standing for a concrete measure and ”%” for a proportional one really the source of since confusion and anger? What about db, or decibel? It’s a measure of the ratio of quantities on a logarithmic scale, and is regularly applied to sound, electricity and other values. Is it as confusing?

                  • lunarul@lemmy.world
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                    3 hours ago

                    In all your examples, k is a prefix to the unit. You can have 1 km, or 1 kdB. But there’s no such thing as a kilopercent and that’s not how it was used in the title. It was the common informal shortening of 1000 to 1k. So it wasn’t 1(k%), it was (1k)%. Which is an odd combination. It’s not confusing, everyone understood what was meant, but it’s still stupid and unnecessary.