Thread

1. miffy900 · 1789683723 · focus · HN ↗

   I really wish people would stop saying N times smaller than something when making a comparison; that makes no sense - it's 1/9th (11.11%) the size. You don't get a smaller quantity by multiplying by a number greater than 1.0. You could instead reverse the subjects being compared - "the original model is 9x bigger than this new smaller, efficient model" or some such. That makes sense.

   I keep seeing this being used when people talk about efficiency or performance gains and it's just very unintuitive language.

   1. UI_at_80x24 · 1789684179 · focus · HN ↗

      Me too!! It's a huge pet peeve. And it's so hard to get people to see how it's linguistically AND mathematically WRONG.

      1. Kinrany · 1789703489 · focus · HN ↗

         I disagree completely and I'd be happy to be convinced otherwise
      2. Taek · 1789733224 · focus · HN ↗

         I wrote this elsewhere but I felt it was worth saying again. "9x smaller" is an idiom, much like "spill the beans" or "it costs an arm and a leg".

         Idioms don't have to make literal sense or be linguistically/mathematically correct to be useful. All that matters is that other people know exactly what you mean when you say it.

         And, pretty much universally, if I tell someone "the compressed file is 10x smaller than the original", they are going to know what I mean is that the byte size is 10% of the size of the original.

         That makes it an idiom that is perfectly okay for everyday use.

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