per100unit

Per100unit is a normalization approach used to express a quantity relative to a base of 100 units of a reference measure. It is commonly used to compare rates across different samples or time periods by scaling results to a common denominator of 100 units. The term is not a formal SI unit, but a descriptive expression that communicates density, incidence, or concentration in a familiar way.

To compute a value per100unit, divide the observed quantity by the total number of units, then multiply by 100. Formula: rate_per100 = (Q / N) × 100, where Q is the measured quantity and N is the number of units observed. If N equals the number of items produced, defects per100unit gives defects per 100 units, for example.

Common contexts include manufacturing quality (defects per 100 units), nutrition (calories or nutrients per 100 g), epidemiology (cases per 100 people), and finance (revenue per 100 items sold). It is also used in benchmarking to compare performance across products or periods.

Advantages of the per100unit approach include easy interpretability, comparability across heterogeneous samples, and compatibility with percentage thinking. Limitations include that the choice of base unit affects interpretation, and very small or very large N can distort apparent density. It is important to report both the per100unit rate and the underlying totals to provide full context.

Related concepts include percent, rate per unit, per capita, per thousand, and normalization. Per100unit shares similarities with percent but emphasizes a per-100 scale rather than a fixed percentage of a maximum or total.