Quote:
Originally Posted by retiredguy123
I saw a commercial on television today for a product called Relaxium. They say that it will help you fall asleep. And, it will make you fall asleep 140 percent faster if you use the product. Can someone please tell me what that means? If you normally fall asleep in 30 minutes, how long will it take to fall asleep when using the product? It seems to me that, if you fall asleep in no time, that would be 100 percent faster than 30 minutes. So, how can you fall asleep any faster than that?
|
I find claims of, say, “five times LESS” quite puzzling, and that’s what you are dealing with. Why not say “One fifth the time”? If it takes 100 minutes to fall asleep, it would then take 20 minutes. Easy! If it is five times MORE, then 500. Easy!
I’m not great at math, but I can do lots of fractions in my head, and I know from teaching college that lots of young people can’t do that at all. So, I suspect that lots of people don’t know what 140 percent faster means, and neither do I. They just think, “Oh, that’s a lot” and get out their credit card. Of course, a lot of these claims for medications are rubbish anyway. A company spends a fortune advertising a new product that works—at an exorbitant price—but no better than a much cheaper product that has been around for years.