I thought the article was well written and informative John. Like you have stated, companies throw around light transmission numbers basically to attract customers. Bushnell used to advertise that they had " the brightest scopes in the world" with a published figure of 95%. That figure is measured in the center of the visible color spectrum (550nm). Leupold states that they have 98% "total light transmission) whatever that means. It looks like Zeiss measures across the visible spectrum or some type of an average apparently. In the end, even though people see things differently due to their eye sight capabilities, if I see better through one scope it is likely that you will see the same difference(percentage wise) even though our eye sight isn't the same.
