Timeline for Has "N times less" become commonplace? [duplicate]
Current License: CC BY-SA 4.0
15 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
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| Jul 31 at 20:12 | comment | added | trex005 | @Zebrafish if ship A was four times BIGGER than ship B, than ship A is 500% the size of ship B. Or in the alternative, ship A is 400% BIGGER than ship B. To make it a little more obvious we can use double the size. i.e. if ship C is 100% BIGGER than ship D, ship C is 2 times the size as ship D, ship C is 200% the size of ship D. etc. | |
| Sep 3, 2021 at 11:11 | comment | added | Anton Shepelev |
For whatever usage one settles, the meanings of xntimes less and n times greater must be symmetrical. I for one consider them unintuitive because less somehow implies an additive—rather than multiplicative—comparison. On the other hand y is n times higher/lower than x are to me perfectly clear, multiplicative comparisons, meaning y=nx and ny=x respectively.
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| Sep 20, 2019 at 14:09 | comment | added | user3015682 | I suppose it means that 5*A < B, but yea it's better to say less than 1/5. A recent article on Axios mentions "(asteroid) 5 times closer to Earth than the moon". I suppose because 5 * 40,400 < 238,900, but they should have said less than 1/5 the distance. | |
| Aug 20, 2018 at 13:28 | history | closed |
WS2 JMP jimm101 J. Taylor Skooba - Stands Against AI |
Duplicate of Meaning of “x is 35 times less than y" | |
| Aug 20, 2018 at 5:22 | comment | added | Zebrafish | @Scott I should have said just divide by 5 or multiple by the reciprocal of five. I've mentioned in other comments that to interpret it in the way some people perceive it results in a negative number. Either way, my initial statement is correct, and the follow-on to it is wrong. I can't edit it. | |
| Aug 20, 2018 at 4:13 | comment | added | Scott - Слава Україні | Jim Newton: The “N times less” formulation may have become popular because 142% of people don’t understand fractions. :-) | |
| Aug 20, 2018 at 4:13 | comment | added | Scott - Слава Україні | @Zebrafish: Can you flesh out your comment? For example, if Barney weighs 400 pounds, and Andrew weighs 5 times less than Barney, would you compute 400×5=2000? And then what? 400−2000, yielding a negative number? | |
| Aug 16, 2018 at 10:40 | history | edited | Jim Newton | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
added 55 characters in body
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| Aug 16, 2018 at 9:51 | answer | added | user184130 | timeline score: 3 | |
| Aug 16, 2018 at 9:20 | review | Close votes | |||
| Aug 20, 2018 at 13:28 | |||||
| Aug 16, 2018 at 9:06 | comment | added | Zebrafish | Also how does A = B - 5*A correspond to A is 5 times less than B? Why would you multply A by 5? If A is x times less than B, multiplying A by x makes no sense, rather you'd multiply B by x and subtract from B to get A. Or something like that. | |
| Aug 16, 2018 at 8:53 | comment | added | Zebrafish | How do you say ship A was four times bigger than ship B? "Ship A was 400% the size of ship A? | |
| Aug 16, 2018 at 8:51 | answer | added | Drazex | timeline score: 3 | |
| Aug 16, 2018 at 8:42 | comment | added | Brandin | You linked to the other question which already seems to answer this issue. For example I notice most marketing material tends to say "half off" or "10% off" and so on for discounts, which means that they seem to already express it in a clear way by your example. Could you imagine a grocer saying "today: milk is 3 times cheaper?" What would he mean? If he meant that milk is being sold for 1/3 of the normal price today, I think he would just say that. Of course, there may be people here and there who phrase things strangely or explain things in an unclear way, but that is hardly surprising. | |
| Aug 16, 2018 at 8:34 | history | asked | Jim Newton | CC BY-SA 4.0 |