soft question: explaining proportions/percentages in simple terms I know this is a fairly easy question but I haven't been able to word it into Google so as it would give me a substantive list of resources.
Here's my question:
If a process is 25% efficient,  I'd multiply (1/0.25) by the output, which would yield what is necessary for a 100% efficient output. 
Is there a way to verbalize what this division is actually doing? (i.e. what are the units of 1 and 0.25)

The simple term you are looking for is to scale something.
Your example:

A process is 25% efficient.
  To find 100% efficient output, multiply (1/0.25) by the output.

You are scaling the process. Here this means to multiply it by a scalar -- in this case a dimensionless quantity in which the units of a percentage-to-percentage ratio cancel out.  So:

A process is 25% efficient.
Scale it by the inverse of that efficiency (1/0.25) to find the 100% efficient output.

In general, "scale by the inverse" is one simple and compact way of describing the act of canceling out a ratio through scaling by its inverse. I think this is what you mean by asking how to verbalize "what this division is actually doing."
