Twice as cold?

[Colophon]

quoted from Keeve

I’ve wondered this problem for ages, and this seems like the right place to ask:

Suppose on one particular day, 40% of the people like the President, and 60% do not like him. Then, more people start liking him. Which poll results would lead you to say that “He is twice as popular as before.”

Would it be:

A) 80% for, 20% against, because twice as many people like him; or
B) 70% for, 30% against, because half as many people dislike him; or
C) Perhaps there is a different way to calculate it. It bothers me that A and B are such very different situations: In A, it is a 4 to 1 ratio, but in B it is merely 2.33 to 1.

I would say in this example it’s the ratio that’s important. In the original poll, the popularity is 40:60, i.e. 2 people like him for every 3 people that dislike him.

So to double in popularity, he needs to have 4 people liking him for every 3 people that dislike him, making a ratio of 4:3, or in percentage terms, about 57.14% for and 42.86% against.

How does that sound?

[Mangetout]

I would have thought that ‘twice as cold’, if it has any validity or meaning whatever, must refer to the effect on human comfort; if it takes twenty minutes for your fingers to get frostbite at temperature X, then ‘twice as cold as X’ would be the temperature at which frostbite occurs in half the time.

[Keeve]

*Originally posted by r_k *
**So to double in popularity, he needs to have 4 people liking him for every 3 people that dislike him, making a ratio of 4:3, or in percentage terms, about 57.14% for and 42.86% against. How does that sound? **

Sounds great! That’s the “example C” that I was looking for. Thanks!