Timeline for ...achieved, on average, mixed results at best...?
Current License: CC BY-SA 3.0
10 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Mar 20, 2016 at 0:43 | vote | accept | Wildcard | ||
| Mar 19, 2016 at 17:04 | history | edited | Edwin Ashworth | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
added 67 characters in body
|
| Mar 19, 2016 at 15:31 | comment | added | Wildcard | @EdwinAshworth, from your comment on the answer it seems that you feel I need to explain something more in order to have this question fit in with ELU requirements; would you mind clarifying what that is, please? | |
| Mar 19, 2016 at 14:45 | comment | added | Edwin Ashworth | @Karl Agree completely. Thanks for not rewarding a question that needs to be explained much more clearly with an answer (though this would be a great one). | |
| Mar 19, 2016 at 13:38 | comment | added | Captain Cranium | @Karl Agreed. The writer wants his readers to feel that a certain style of industrial approach has been definitively discredited, largely because his article is essentially an advert for a company that purports to do things differently. To promote this favourable view, he deploys (among other things) this phrase that actually says nothing usefully intelligible: mixed results are no surprise at all; on average implies a scale of measurement that he does not reveal; and at best implies generally unsuccessful (not mixed!) results in some unexplained sense. It's meaningless handwaving. | |
| Mar 19, 2016 at 13:26 | comment | added | Karl | I'm afraid I can't agree with the comments. It achieved mixed results at best, meaning that the best thing that can be said was that it achieved mixed results. Agreed. It achieved, on average, mixed results. Meaning that the average results were mixed. This is somewhat problematic already, since the average is taken from all results. If the results were mixed, then an average would fall somewhere in the middle of the worst and best results. ...on average...at best. Seems to be a contradiction in terms, are we talking about its best results, or the average of its results? | |
| Mar 19, 2016 at 13:12 | answer | added | Captain Cranium | timeline score: 0 | |
| Mar 19, 2016 at 12:52 | comment | added | anongoodnurse | @DanBron - that's why I said an almost tautology. It depends a bit on context. How many results are we talking about? However, I think your comment is more in line with how I first read the sentence. | |
| Mar 19, 2016 at 12:48 | comment | added | Dan Bron | Yes, it means the best that can be said of [the approach] is that the typical outcome was mixed (i.e. sorta good, sorta bad). There is nothing better than can be said about [the approach]. That's the best we can say. In re: "on average", that means that there may have been some outcomes which were stellar, and some which were abysmal, and some which were non-descript, etc, but variation is normal, and those specific outcomes aren't really characteristic of the process when viewed holistically. So yes: the approach achieved, on average, mixed results at best. | |
| Mar 19, 2016 at 12:38 | history | asked | Wildcard | CC BY-SA 3.0 |