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Comment by orijing | Hacker News Reader

Misleading. Microsoft's quarterly profit grew pretty quickly (above 30%). It's just that Apple's profit grew faster, causing it to take the lead in the race.

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Guys, I didn't mean to start such a discussion over the wording. I said it was misleading, not "cannot be interpreted correctly."

In particular, by saying that X's profit dropped below Y's for the first time (without context of X and Y) suggests TO ME that X's profit dropped when that was not the case.

By "misleading," I meant that had I not known profit figures already, I would have assumed the title meant that Microsoft's profit had fallen. It means that the understanding it leads you to believe initially is incorrect, hence misleading.

I downvoted your original post because I read "misleading" as implying that it was intentionally, wilfully misleading - i.e. lying. But you're correct: the wording misled you (and understandably so) to an incorrect conclusion. Apologies.

No worries. Perhaps my use of "misleading" was itself misleading!

I don't see what's misleading here. Doesn't your sentence basically mean the same thing the title does? As you said, microsoft's profits grew slower, and they had lower profits than apple did, which means the story title is far from misleading.

MS didn't drop below Apple, Apple grew above MS. It's a pretty important distinction - drop means they declined, Apple is now making more money than Microsoft, and Microsoft is making more money than they used to too.

When describing standing in sports you don't say "X won less than Y so Y is ahead", you say "X dropped below Y in the standings". Most financial reporting is based on sports speech.

Standings are a relative measure. Profits are not. You can say MS dropped below Apple in the rankings of profits. Likewise, one would NOT say in sports that X dropped below Y in wins. You'd say that Y passed X in wins.

I don't think it's misleading. Since it says that MS profit "drops below Apple's", it's making reference to a relative difference, in which case it did drop.

It can be understood in multiple ways, maybe not intentionally misleading but it could be written better.

"My height grew above Yao Ming's last year". Did I surpass his height last year or grow more during that period of time?

In that case, you are now taller than Yao Ming. The subject of the sentence is your height, and you said it grew 'above'. Therefore the only valid interpretation is that your height is now above Yao Ming's. For it to be interpreted the other way, you would have had to say "My height grew _faster_ than Yao Ming's last year", or "My height _growth_ was above Yao Ming's last year". My point is that people can interpret things any way they want, but that doesn't mean their interpretation is valid.

Hah, we're getting off topic. You're right, phrasing it that way leads to multiple interpretations whether correct incorrect. When I read the title originally, I was thinking "total profit" instead of relative. Whether intentional or not, I think the title could have been worded better.

Not misleading at all. You just misunderstood. A drop is a drop even when it's relative.

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