Boss: I'm sorry but business has been bad this month. I'm going to cut your salary by 50%. Employee: Gee, that will be tough at Christmas time. Boss: I'm going to make it all up with a 50% increase in January. ***** So I buy it for $5 and I sell it for $10. Surely it's OK to advertise a 50% markup. 50% of $10 is what I paid for it, isn't it? ***** This survey has a 3% probability of error. SQRT(1000)/1000 = 3% ignoring everything about selecting the sample. ***** The moral is that it's not only calculators that abuse the English grammar of "%". -- --> If you are presented a number as a percentage, and you do not clearly understand the numerator and the denominator involved, you are surely being lied to. <--