I thought today I'd write about something that drives me crazy. It's only one of many things that do that to me, but one that I happened to notice this morning.
I see in a lot of places where people say or write something to the effect that something is X-times less or fewer or smaller than something else. Just this morning I read that scientists have developed a brush 1,000 times finer than a human hair. This is a mathmatical impossibility. Something can't be anything "times" smaller than something else. It can be a fraction of the size, amount, etc., such as 1/1,000th of the size, etc. That works but not 1,000 times smaller. Anything 1,000 times anything else would have to be larger.
I see this in the news media, and ever increasingly even in scientific journals. It's more than just poor grammar, it's not logical or mathmatical.
'Nuff said.
I see in a lot of places where people say or write something to the effect that something is X-times less or fewer or smaller than something else. Just this morning I read that scientists have developed a brush 1,000 times finer than a human hair. This is a mathmatical impossibility. Something can't be anything "times" smaller than something else. It can be a fraction of the size, amount, etc., such as 1/1,000th of the size, etc. That works but not 1,000 times smaller. Anything 1,000 times anything else would have to be larger.
I see this in the news media, and ever increasingly even in scientific journals. It's more than just poor grammar, it's not logical or mathmatical.
'Nuff said.
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