Mathematically speaking, 18 / 3.6 isn’t “reducing” by 3.6X, it’s “dividing” by 3.6X. Reducing would be 18 - (18 * 3.6), which is obviously wrong. By your formula, “reducing by 50%” would be 18 / 0.5, also obviously wrong.
Yes, people do say things like “reduce by 3.6X” and are understood to mean what you said, but they also say “literally” when they mean “figuratively”. It doesn’t bother me but I can understand why math oriented people would be annoyed, and I personally would never say “reduced by 3.6X”, but instead “reduced by 72.2%”.
I was sincere, because as you point out, the phrasing is not actually ambiguous here. There is only one way to interpret this that is coherent and sensible. The usual % shenanigans weren't even on the table for me.
Not that I'd have ever seen "reduced by 0.5x" or any other value below 1x, probably for this very reason. What I do see is "reduced to 0.5x", in which case you're supposed to swap the division for multiplication.
Percentages on the other hand are a whole another can of worms, even if these forms are principally interchangeable, and I find them a lot more confusing a lot more often.
Not that this would explain the whole mean/geomean thing.
According to the article this is a closed loop cooling system, once it’s up and running it doesn’t use any water. They run water through it during installation and that’s the discharge that they found bacteria in.
You can have a “closed loop system” but you need to shed heat somewhere and that is either by air cooling drawing tons of electricity, or evaporation that draws tons of water.
Air cooled chillers are generally used in a closed loop system. A coefficient of performance (COP) of 4 is reasonable to expect, which means 1 watt of electricity to remove 4 watts of heat.
Fun game! On iOS I frequently triggered a double-tap zoom accidentally, and it’s weirdly difficult to zoom back out once that happens (a second double-tap doesn’t work, and pinch to zoom out only works in some areas of the page).
I'm curious if Quarto could coordinate all of that for you automatically. It supports both code execution via Jupyter, and output via Typst (including books).
If you’re sincerely asking…
Mathematically speaking, 18 / 3.6 isn’t “reducing” by 3.6X, it’s “dividing” by 3.6X. Reducing would be 18 - (18 * 3.6), which is obviously wrong. By your formula, “reducing by 50%” would be 18 / 0.5, also obviously wrong.
Yes, people do say things like “reduce by 3.6X” and are understood to mean what you said, but they also say “literally” when they mean “figuratively”. It doesn’t bother me but I can understand why math oriented people would be annoyed, and I personally would never say “reduced by 3.6X”, but instead “reduced by 72.2%”.
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