Macroaxis: Sony Has 79% Chance of Going Bankrupt in the Next 2 Years

[Alby_da_Wolf]

Aielyn said:

irstupid said:
Learn how to read statistics before you comment.

If my company has a 20% chance of failing and yours has a 50% of failing.  Your chance of failing can be read as 150% higher than mine.

That doesn't mean you are at 170%.  Your number is just 150% or 2.5x higher than my number.

I have a PhD in Mathematics. I know all about statistics. The statistics there are meaningless. If your company has a 20% chance of failing and mine has a 50% chance of failing, then my company has a 30% higher chance of failing. That's how probability works. You can say that you have a 2.5x greater chance, but you can't say 150% higher chance.

More importantly, as I pointed out, it can't be 120% lower chance, because that would make a negative chance, either way. They probably intended it to be read as "the chance of the other thing is 120% higher", but nobody with any understanding of mathematics and statistics would use the "120% lower chance".

This. And actually even high school maths studied decently should be enough to tell that "120% lower chance" was utter crap, it would be in every case in which a quantity can't be negative, not just statistics.