• BreadstickNinja@lemmy.world
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    10 months ago

    That’s exactly how percentages work. The pre-war population of Gaza was 2.3 million. If Israel kills 23,000 Gazans in three months, then that’s 1% of the population.

    If Israel kills another 23,000 Gazans in the next three months, that’s another 1% of the pre-war population, and Gaza’s population will now be 98% of the pre-war total. And so on.

    If you’re trying to say that percentages can only be calculated in the context of compound rates, then you’re flat-out wrong.

    • corvus@lemmy.ml
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      10 months ago

      If you kill 5% of the population every year from 1933 to 1945, how much of the initial population >you end up killing?

      This is the simple math problem you stated and the answer is 46%, not 60%. Nobody does the calculation the way you do. Or you think that a simple math problem has two contradictory answers? Show me a single example that someone does the calculation the way you do to answer such a simple problem, you have the whole internet. I accept my error if you find it.

      • DrDominate@lemmy.world
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        10 months ago

        I think he meant to word it, if you take 5% of the initial population every year for 12 years, how much of that initial population is left, no?

        • corvus@lemmy.ml
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          10 months ago

          That’s how he made the calculation, but it’s not what he said, because 5% of European jews each year it’s not the same as 5% of the initial European jews. The word initial is absent and in my view that make its numbers wrong. But yeah, may be I’m being too strict and most of you understood what he meant. By I think it’s misleading because it can give you the idea that in general if you have 60% in 12 years you can calculate the percentage for each year just by dividing by 12. And that is certainly wrong.