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98% isn't much

whynothugo.nl

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Re: 98% isn't much

#291

Post by zem »

Eridrus wrote: post #201
throwaway173738 wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He wasn’t actually giving a blanket directive. The article was suggesting that you think about whether 98% is actually good in your use case by doing the math and thinking.

Yeah, but the guy writing the article seems to be bad at math and thinking. Can I imagine a venue kicking out 2% of their former clients on some criteria? Absolutely yes. Kicking out 2% of website visitors may still be totally reasonable if the cost to serve them is meaningful, or if they are less than 2% of revenue. His defense for 98% being bad is that some CSS thing people were arguing about only had 70% coverage…

imagine not 2% of users not being able to use the site, but any given user not being able to use the site 2% of the time, and see if that changes the calculus for you.

Re: 98% isn't much

#292

Post by Maxatar »

dizhn wrote: post #254
nemo1618 wrote: post #187

After Christmas this year, I removed the tree from our living room, and in the process of being moved, it shed of needles everywhere . I swept them up, but I missed a few areas on my first pass. So I did a second pass, but when I looked again, I saw there were still a handful left. It struck me how removing >99% of the needles was nowhere near acceptable! Lots of cleaning jobs are like this, I suppose, because even a…

It's like those antibacterial soaps that remove 99.9 percent of bacteria. It's not obvious whether that's number of bacteria or type of bacteria but either way the remaining ones are probably in the millions and of many types.

Nah... a typical human hand has in the hundreds of thousands of bacteria if it hasn't been washed in awhile, not in the millions.

Washing with soap reduces it down to the thousands and sanitizers reduces it another order of magnitude down to the hundreds.

Re: 98% isn't much

#293

Post by parineum »

jrowen wrote: post #256
parineum wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's contextual depending on which end of the probability is the desired outcome. SPF is like this. SPF 30 allows 1/30th (3%) of the UV through it, blocking 29/30ths (97%). SPF 50 (2%) allows 1/50th, blocking 49/50ths (98%). Using the denominator, in this case, expressed the efficacy much more intuitively. Comparing SPF 30 vs 50 better expresses the increase in efficacy than 97% vs 98% does. One could also express it…

On the other hand, it's completely unintuitive that "Sun Protection Factor 30 = 1/30th of UV light passes through it", and I had no idea there was any correlation before this comment. The only intuitive bit about that system is "bigger number does more." I feel like I would have more readily understood it if it just said "blocks 97% (or 98%) of UV light" instead of numbers I assumed were somewhat arbitrary.

The intuitive part comes when comparing two options.

If you use 20 instead of 10, you'll be exposed to half as much UV even though it's only an additional 5% of protection.

The number could just be the percentage of exposure (5 v 10) and express the same relationship but the denominator has the advantage of bigger numbers being more protective while still being more intuitively comparable.

Many people would see 90% vs 95% and not intuit that it's twice the protection.

Re: 98% isn't much

#294

Post by jimrandomh »

If you think a browser feature that's been standard since 2023 is only supported by 70% of your visitors, you're wrong. The 30% of "users" that don't support it aren't visitors, they're bots pretending to be browsers. Bots update their user-agent strings less often than users update their browsers. My experience maintaining firewall rules is that "outdated version of an evergreen browser" is a pretty reliable bot signal: those UAs correlate strongly with all of the other bot indicators (inhumanly high request rates, datacenter IPs, loading pages without loading the page's associated resources, etc).

Re: 98% isn't much

#295

Post by bonzini »

explodingwaffle wrote: post #210
dataviz1000 wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Former chef here (2 Michelin starred restaurants). 5% is beyond plenty; it is awesome! > works for 98% of the population, that means that it won’t work for ~150 million people If I can only cook for 70 people a night, I most likely can't serve the ~150 million people who do not have access to modern browsers. And, those who do have access to those browsers and choose not use those browsers likely will not enjoy my fo…

man, HN is awesome

It's spelled osso buco though.

Re: 98% isn't much

#298

Post by bonzini »

dataviz1000 wrote: post #297
bonzini wrote: post #295

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's spelled osso buco though.

Your comment very much makes my point.

Maybe, or maybe there is no yacht and no 2 star restaurant. Since your profile doesn't have any personal info (which is certainly your right, mind) I have only one data point and it tilts towards the latter.

Re: 98% isn't much

#299

Post by nextaccountic »

dizhn wrote: post #254
nemo1618 wrote: post #187

After Christmas this year, I removed the tree from our living room, and in the process of being moved, it shed of needles everywhere . I swept them up, but I missed a few areas on my first pass. So I did a second pass, but when I looked again, I saw there were still a handful left. It struck me how removing >99% of the needles was nowhere near acceptable! Lots of cleaning jobs are like this, I suppose, because even a…

It's like those antibacterial soaps that remove 99.9 percent of bacteria. It's not obvious whether that's number of bacteria or type of bacteria but either way the remaining ones are probably in the millions and of many types.

Removing that much bacteria from our own hands isn't even something desirable or good

I mean, unless we are doing open heart surgery with no gloves or something

Re: 98% isn't much

#300

Post by tikhonj »

Eridrus wrote: post #201
throwaway173738 wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He wasn’t actually giving a blanket directive. The article was suggesting that you think about whether 98% is actually good in your use case by doing the math and thinking.

Yeah, but the guy writing the article seems to be bad at math and thinking. Can I imagine a venue kicking out 2% of their former clients on some criteria? Absolutely yes. Kicking out 2% of website visitors may still be totally reasonable if the cost to serve them is meaningful, or if they are less than 2% of revenue. His defense for 98% being bad is that some CSS thing people were arguing about only had 70% coverage…

Kicking out 2% of your existing customers in a physical venue violates people's expectations, so it's going to get you disproportionate bad reviews and word-of-mouth.

Good thing that we've managed to keep everybody's expectations a hell of a lot lower for software quality then :)

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