Heard this phrase tonight on Discovery-Wings channel. How advanced manufacturing techniques made a propellor “just as strong and may times lighter” than a conventional solid propellor.
Jeez, that kind of language use cheeses me off. Throw in crap like “twice as cold”, “twice as small”, and “Three times less”.
Don’t these people know about fractions? Don’t they know that there is only heat or it’s absence, and “cold” is not a measurable quantity? Don’t they know that a volume multiplied by a counting number is a LARGER volume?
Now, NOw, jimbo, calm down. You’ve got to remember that Discovery is for the masses who have no idea about fractions, much less the existence of quantities that cannot be measured. And volumes multiplies by a counting number equalling a larger volume? :eek:
It’s one of my pet peeves as well. I mean, sure, you can multiply something by a fraction and make it “many times less,” but the term is just damned confusing and really unnecessary.
I hate this too and thought it was only done by the mathematically challenged until I saw it used in Scientific American, something along the lines of “star X is ten times closer than star Y”. Sorry, SA, I now think you are two times less smart.
I agree it is bad form though, the same as using percentages for large numbers. Everybody gets that wrong. If last year we sold 100 and this year we sold 1600, we did not increase our sales by 1600%. Percentages are best used when they are under, say, 50, and then it is better to use factors.
Sailor,
It’s not that we don’t inderstand it, it’s that it’s WRONG! And many times, these terms are used in forums where the writers/speakers SHOULD know better. I mean Scientific American, fer Christ sake!
“Ten times as close” doesn’t bother me as much as the other examples, because there’s an implied specific reference point. I’m assuming the phrase meant that “Star B is ten times as close to Earth as Star A.” So at least in this case it makes sense that, if Star B is one-tenth the distance (from Earth) that Star A is, Star B has ten times the “closeness” (to Earth) that Star A has.
Some of the other phrases make no sense at all, though. (Another rant should deal with people saying “two times more” to mean “twice as much”…)