RE: What to say when figures appear as though they "don't add up" --but do

[Kim Roper <kim -dot- roper -at- vitana -dot- com>]

This is more of a wording geek issue than a math geek one:

"Figures may not add up to 100% due to rounding."

Yes, I know it's an abuse of the word "may," but it's in common usage.  

Cheers ... Kim

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Cummings, Elizabeth [mailto:CummEl -at- ncs -dot- com]
> Sent: Tuesday, March 13, 2001 11:51 AM
> To: TECHWR-L
> Subject: What to say when figures appear as though they "don't add
> up"--but do
> 
[snip]
> 
> As you can probably tell already, I am no "math person", but 
> this concept
> makes sense to me: When I see that a figure in one of our 
> many reports that
> is off by one or I see a total does not register as a perfect 
> 100%, I know
> that this is the result of the behind-the-scenes rounding. Apparently,
> though, several users are troubled by such seeming 
> miscalculations, and my
> manager asked whether I knew of any industry-wide standard 
> for explaining
> this scenario so that I could include it in our user's guide. 
> 
> Thanks so much for your time. 
> 
> --Elizabeth Cummings
> 
> 

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

Develop HTML-Based Help with Macromedia Dreamweaver 4 ($100 STC Discount)
**New Dates!!** San Francisco (Apr 16-17), San Jose (Mar 29-30)
http://www.weisner.com/training/dreamweaver_help.htm or 800-646-9989.

IPCC 01, the IEEE International Professional Communication Conference,
October 24-27, 2001 at historic La Fonda in Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA.
CALL FOR PAPERS OPEN UNTIL MARCH 15.  http://ieeepcs.org/2001/

---
You are currently subscribed to techwr-l as: archive -at- raycomm -dot- com
To unsubscribe send a blank email to leave-techwr-l-obscured -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com
Send administrative questions to ejray -at- raycomm -dot- com -dot-  Visit 
http://www.raycomm.com/techwhirl/ for more resources and info.