Percentage Stats Question

[salty justice]

Sorry if this doesnt go here, or if you think it is a dumb question.

But, why are statistical percentages in this sport not given as a percentage? Such as save percentages and shooting percentages. By definition percentage is a success ratio over 100. So if a goalie has a "save percentage" of .955, that is extremely bad, technically speaking it would mean that the goalie makes less than 1 save for every 100 shots.

Why cant they move the decimal over 2 places to make it a real percentage value, or just call it a ratio?

Im not complaining because I or anyone else would ever make the mistake of misunderstanding the stats columns, but why cant they just call something what it is?

They dont make this mistake in baseball. Batting average is not called batting percentage.

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[joeminus]

Right, just like you said a "percentage" is a RATIO of success OVER 100. So, what's the problem? Try looking up the definitions of "ratio," and "over," too.

A ratio of 99 over 100 is expressed mathematically as 0.99, because a ratio of 100 over (i.e., divided by) 100 would be 1.

The NHL takes it out one more decimal place because save percentages tend to be so similar.

Baseball batting averages are more of a misnomer than save percentages. The term percentage makes it explicit that the denominator is 100, while the term average does not. It's just sort of "commonly understood" that a batting "average" of .300 means a guy tends to "average" about 30 hits for every 100 at bats.

 

[SuperUnknown]

Why is this in business?

 

[PecaFan]

Right. The term percentage says to divide by 100. So the math technically is .955 / 100, which would be incorrect.
(And there's no difference in significant digits between .955 and 95.5%)

Bob, while nitpicking, is right.

 

[CoolburnIsGone]

Yes this is in the wrong section. But to answer the question,

A percentage is a way of expressing a proportion or a fraction as a whole number. A number such as "45%" ("45 percent" or "45 per cent") is actually shorthand for the fraction 45/100

As an illustration,

"45 percent of human beings..."
is equivalent to both of the following:

"45 out of every 100 people..."
"0.45 of the human population..."

Using the illustration, you can see that a .955 save percentage is the same as saying 955 out of 1000 shots are saved. Also the statistic name doesn't say .955 percent saved...if it did, then you'd be correct theBob.

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Percentage