up vote 5 down vote favorite

Just look at this:

this screenshot.
I did the math, 580 = .58 of 1000. I also refreshed the page, clicked on "view vote counts...." I haven't received any rep for a while...

Is it an update issue?

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Its a rounding error, ignore it. – soandos Aug 9 '11 at 14:18
@random not sure the status is correct, see my comment to my answer. Did the team mention something? – Daniel Beck Feb 3 at 16:25
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1 Answer

up vote 7 down vote accepted

You did the math, but used the wrong base. 0.58 as a binary floating point number is slightly less than the decimal value, since it cannot be represented exactly:

enter image description here

Apparently they always round down the computed result to two decimal digits (i.e. to the next integer percentage), probably to prevent this page from showing an incorrect "100%" when you're at e.g. 19999/20000.

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I used some random Java applet (apparently they still exist) to get this value, so it might be off a bit at the less significant digits. But the overall reason is still this. – Daniel Beck Jan 27 at 7:40
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Now, of course the real solution (for presentation purposes) is to multiply your rep by 100 first, then divide by the required rep for the privilege, then round down to an integer. Display that value instead. Problem solved. – Daniel Beck Jan 27 at 7:55
Doing some calcs on a few other accounts compared to the listed privileges they all show rounding down – random♦ Feb 3 at 16:39
@random The point here is that it rounds down after the floating point imprecision messes up things at the 8th decimal digit. 580/1000 shouldn't be 57%, unless you're doing it wrong (tm). – Daniel Beck Feb 3 at 16:41
Doing it wrong is the only way to do maths – random♦ Feb 3 at 16:54
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