3 ms·
"order of magnitude" is literally the least explicit you can be without just saying "lots bigger". Why be overly pedantic?
by inimino 7y ago
"order of magnitude" is literally the least explicit you can be without just saying "lots bigger". Why be overly pedantic?
- nkurz 7y agoI think the problem may be that "order of magnitude more" means different things to different people. Colloquially, it does get used to mean "a lot more", and some people use it because it sounds more scientific. But in a more correct sense, it means "closer to 10x than 1x or 100x": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Order_of_magnitude#Definition https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Order_of_magnitude#Definition. I personally dislike the phrase and try to avoid it. But if one is going to use it, I think it should be used correctly. (I agree with jdietrich that the definition of "city" matters)