Quote Originally Posted by fay2 View Post
As a rebuttal it's pretty clunky
Phrases are cultural. So differences in the use of a phase and meaning of a phrase will be found in different places of the world as well and different social groups.

example: Some people will say nearly half is 51% too

So the spirit of the phases meaning will be different to different people. Phases have a literal meaning in the words used too: Half, is 1/2 or 50%, and nearly, being very close to or almost.

Considering it moved to math in % then the literal meaning becomes the issue. Math is very literal.
True, phrases are cultural, with different meanings in different places. But 'nearly' in of itself means the term described is comparable to the term 'nearly' is used with. In math, if it is said that 'x is nearly equal to y' then 'y' can be used as a valid substitution in any calculations involving 'x' as long as we remember that it is an approximation. In this case 'x' s the true amount of souls sacrificed for Zodiark, while 'y' is 50% of the survivors, and as such using 50% is a valid approximation.

And yes, 51% is close enough to 50% that using 50% would be a valid approximation in that case too.