The council planted a new tree on my road, trees surged in population from 1 to 2 yesterday
That’s why we’re talking about relative percentages.
In your example we would need to know how many trees existed on your road/city before. If there were less than 3 or 4 trees in your city before this, saying there was a surge is likely fine.
I gave you that information, I said “from 1 to 2” and added context of “a tree” (singular)
My terribly made point is that although technically correct when talking about relative increase it’s dumb as fuck to say trees “surged in population” after adding just one more on one street. It’s a drop on the ocean.
I feel like the term surge respects the final total relative to what its maximum could be as well as the relative increase. But obviously language is regional and up for interpretation
I’m super confused by your point.
In this case we’re looking at Steam.
I have no clue how many people submit to the steam survey, but I’ll assume it’s representative.
A quick google suggests steam has about 120 million active users.
Linux went from about 1.4% to 1.9%.
Rough math says Linux went from 1.7 million to about 2.3 million.
Or an increase of 600 000.
That a lot, both in relative terms and in real terms.
Here’s a counter example for you.
You own stock in banana company. Over one day the price increases 2x. All the news agency’s are talking about how banana surged in price today. Will you then suggest that banana didn’t surge in price because it only makes up 1% of the overall stock market?
