In a power-point presentation about interent trends, the abbreviation Y/Y is being used:
25MM+ people (+14x Y/Y) use Duolingo app to learn new language
12MM+ teachers / students / parents (+15x Y/Y) use Remind101 to send 500MM+ messages
Sadly, the video does not work, so I'm not sure what the abbreviation stands for. What does it mean in this context?
Best Answer
As mentioned in the previous answer, Y/Y is likely to be an abbreviation of the phrase year-over-year. (Or sometimes year-on-year.) Typically, a number before the phrase states a difference or ratio of one year's value of some statistic to the previous year's value.
For example, in wikipedia's “Plug in electric vehicle” article, we find
This indicates that the 2014 value for plug-in hybrids registered during January through July is 1 + 4.54 or 5.54 times as much as the same statistic for 2013. (The added 1 is due to 454% being the amount of growth, ie a difference rather than a ratio.)
In the examples given in the question, “+14x” stands for “up by 14 times” and “+15x” stands for “up by 15 times”. (It isn't clear to me whether they mean incremented by 14 times the previous value, or equal to 14 times the previous value.)
Edit: As an abbreviation of year-over-year, YOY may be more common than Y/Y. See investopedia.com and lexicon.ft.com for examples of use.