this post was submitted on 11 Dec 2024
126 points (94.4% liked)
Electric Vehicles
420 readers
189 users here now
Electric Vehicles are a key part of our tomorrow and how we get there. If we can get all the fossil fuel vehicles off our roads, out of our seas and out of our skies, we'll have a much better environment. This community is where we discuss the various different vehicles and news stories regarding electric transportation.
Related communities:
- [email protected]
- BYD
- [email protected]
- [email protected]
- [email protected]
- [email protected]
- [email protected]
founded 6 months ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Fewer
Tell that to all the math textbooks that say “greater than > or less than <”.
Most of the time, math textbooks are dealing with real numbers (continuous quantities), for which that verbiage is appropriate.
Are percentages not continuous quantities? In this case, they represent ratio of discrete values, but we don't know what those are.
No need to try to enforce a prescriptive distinction between “less” and “fewer” when “less” is often used with count nouns. They can be interchangeable, and it’s been this way for hundreds of years.
"fewer drivers", but it could technically be "less than 1%" , as the number before % is just a real number, so of a continuous spectrum.
it can be less than π% of drivers.
Fewer is not appropriate here if maintaining the common use of fewer.