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Sorry for the off topic comment but this then/than mistake I read every day is just getting on my nerves. " What to Know: Than and then are different word

Sorry for the off topic comment but this then/than mistake I read every day is just getting on my nerves. " What to Know: Than and then are different words. Than is used in comparisons as a conjunction, as in "she is younger than I am," and as a preposition, "he is taller than me." Then indicates time. It is used as an adverb, "I lived in Idaho then," noun, "we'll have to wait until then," and adjective, "the then governor."" [1] [1] https://www.merriam-webster.com/words-at-play/when-to-use-then-and-than https://www.merriam-webster.com/words-at-play/when-to-use-th...

flohofwoe 7y ago
For a non-native speaker it's hard to tell the two apart. Then and than sound pretty much the same. And even if one knows the difference, it's easy to make a typo. In the sort of "international pidgin English" that's spoken anywhere outside the UK such subtle differences should just be ignored.
- ur-whale 7y ago
  >should just be ignored. As a matter of fact, it shouldn't: the sentence with "then" in it has a different meaning altogether than the one with "than" in it. Using "then" suggests that something is done on the CPU and then ("then") on the GPU.
- dkersten 7y ago
  If they are just ignored, how will anyone learn? If they really were small (to the meaning of the sentence) differences, then whatever, but switching than for then changes the sentence.
- heero 7y ago
  I don't agree, I'm not a native speaker and probably like many, I leaned english by reading so those two words sound very diferently in my head. I'm always lost when I see this mistake.
- Majestic121 7y ago
  I don't know about that, this kind of mistakes (then/than, effect/affect) are getting on my nerves as well, and I'm definitely not a native english speaker. Not to mention that this specific kind of mistakes (similar sounds) are at least as often from native speakers as from non-native in my experience/native language. In French, a lot of people mistake Ça for Sa for example, native and non-native alike
- boardwaalk 7y ago
  I don’t think you’ll get much play for suggesting (to an audience of at least some programmers) that we should allow for more ambiguity in language, heh. The programmers I’ve met without an eye for detail are usually ones I do not like working with.
  - flohofwoe 7y ago
    Hehe, true, but unlike programming languages, the languages humans use for communication are "sloppy" and ambiguous by definition. Grammar rules have been invented after the fact to create the illusion that there's order where none exists. English allows much more "freedom" than many other languages (e.g. German), maybe that's one reason why it has been so successful in the end.
- galoisgirl 7y ago
  Speak for you're self. /s
nxpnsv 7y ago
I first thought the title implied "Make DL faster by first running on CPU, then on GPU"...
quietbritishjim 7y ago
You think that's a bad language mistake? The title (and the article itself) says that their CPU run is 3.5x faster than GPU. But actually it's 3.5x as fast, which is a radically different thing: "3.5x faster" would mean "4.5x as fast", in the same way that "50% bigger" means "150% times the size" not "50% of the size". Edit: Clearly this is a contentious comment, and even those of us that see things this way mostly seem to agree that we understand the intended meaning (but things get fuzzer with smaller numbers expressed as percentages e.g. "120% faster"). Surely, though, it makes more sense to use the completely precise phrasing "3.5x as fast", especially for the main statement of the main result in an academic paper.
- mkl 7y ago
  I don't think that's right. I think "two times faster" would mean "twice as fast", not "three times as fast".
  - polar 7y ago
    Consider what 1 times faster or 100% faster would mean.
    - amelius 7y ago
      Language doesn't follow logic sometimes.
      - zimpenfish 7y ago
        https://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=463 https://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=463 >> That last reaction incorporates one criticism of Times-er, namely that it is "illogical" or "irrational": X times more than Y MUST MEAN 'Y plus X-times-Y (that is, 'X+1 times Y'), not 'X times as many/great as Y' (that is, 'X times Y'). (In the most common variant of this reaction, X times more than Y is disparaged because it is said to be ambiguous, with both the 'X times Y' and 'X+1 times Y' interpretations.) >> The appeal here is to the idea that ordinary-language expressions are simply realizations of logical (or arithmetical) formulas. This is just backwards. The formulas are there to represent the meanings of expressions; they are not the prior reality, merely cloaked in (those devilishly vague) words of actual languages.
johnlorentzson 7y ago
It can be simplified as "than is a comparison between two things, then is for referring to a time".
ralfd 7y ago
Curiously, this mistake of "than/then", or similar the grating "would of" instead of would've, I only ever see native speakers do.
- frabert 7y ago
  I think it could be easily attributed to the fact that most non-native speakers learn English at school by studying its grammar in written form, where the two words are distinct. Native speakers, instead, learn English as their spoken language, where the words sound basically identical to each other.
  - notRobot 7y ago
    Yes, true. "have" and "of" don't sound same at all in almost all non-native accents which helps.
- notRobot 7y ago
  True. Non-native speakers learn the language a lot more "explicitly" so they make mistakes like these a lot less often. Another pet peeves: "irregardless" isn't a word. It's regardless. If you don't care about something, you "couldn't care less about it". It's simple logic and yet people mess it up all the time.
  - kylebyproxy 7y ago
    I've only noticed it enter common usage recently, but I cringe whenever someone fails at using the word "devoid".
- moonbug 7y ago
  "would of" and "would've" sound indistinguishable when spoken in many anglophone accents. If it irritates you when you see it written, that just indicates you're a snob.
- galoisgirl 7y ago
  As a non-native, I learned "then" and "than" in different contexts, months if not years apart. I also learned them in speech and in writing at the same time. Please don't quiz me on how to read bear, pear, tear, fear, spear, clear, and dear.
pishpash 7y ago
It's not not knowing the meaning, it's simply a proofing mistake in phonemic writing. For a native speaker, spelling as it sounds is second nature, making morphological distinctions is harder.
gwd 7y ago
My favorite example of the importance of the difference is https://weheartit.com/entry/22781532 https://weheartit.com/entry/22781532
_gtly 7y ago
People using 'further' instead of 'farther' (used for distance) used to get me upset, but people mistake them so often that I realized I was getting upset for no good reason. I know what they meant even if they were ignorant of the grammar. I agree that in an academic paper you don't want to see grammar mistakes, but in many other contexts if you understand what is meant, it's no use getting bent out of shape.
- 2zcon 7y ago
  I do understand it but, for my colleagues and friends who don't have English as their first language, it adds another caveat to learn and remember without a logical basis. That's another place to introduce ambiguity and errors. I don't get angry at non-standard usage but I think it's important not to ignore the purpose of consistent style.
- zimpenfish 7y ago
  > people mistake them so often that I realized I was getting upset for no good reason Indeed, because they come from the same root - the difference only came from English peasants and their wacky spellings. https://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=45754 https://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=45754
blackandblue 7y ago
yea very true! and as someone who grew up speaking french, i want people to stop making the viola/voila mistake too. viola is an instrument. voila is what you mean most of the time. also off-topic, but i heard the word senglish, for singaporean english, on a podcast yesterday. that made me realize how english has the potential to become a universal language with each country having their own version. french people already use the term frenglish when they mix english words with french. we could have spanglish, japenglish, germanish, etc. they don't have to be called those though. it would be totally awesome to be able to communicate with almost everyone in the world. just like the internet!
taneq 7y ago
Unfortunately apparently most people could care less.

flohofwoe 7y ago

For a non-native speaker it's hard to tell the two apart. Then and than sound pretty much the same. And even if one knows the difference, it's easy to make a typo. In the sort of "international pidgin English" that's spoken anywhere outside the UK such subtle differences should just be ignored.

ur-whale 7y ago
>should just be ignored. As a matter of fact, it shouldn't: the sentence with "then" in it has a different meaning altogether than the one with "than" in it. Using "then" suggests that something is done on the CPU and then ("then") on the GPU.
dkersten 7y ago
If they are just ignored, how will anyone learn? If they really were small (to the meaning of the sentence) differences, then whatever, but switching than for then changes the sentence.
heero 7y ago
I don't agree, I'm not a native speaker and probably like many, I leaned english by reading so those two words sound very diferently in my head. I'm always lost when I see this mistake.
Majestic121 7y ago
I don't know about that, this kind of mistakes (then/than, effect/affect) are getting on my nerves as well, and I'm definitely not a native english speaker. Not to mention that this specific kind of mistakes (similar sounds) are at least as often from native speakers as from non-native in my experience/native language. In French, a lot of people mistake Ça for Sa for example, native and non-native alike
boardwaalk 7y ago
I don’t think you’ll get much play for suggesting (to an audience of at least some programmers) that we should allow for more ambiguity in language, heh. The programmers I’ve met without an eye for detail are usually ones I do not like working with.
- flohofwoe 7y ago
  Hehe, true, but unlike programming languages, the languages humans use for communication are "sloppy" and ambiguous by definition. Grammar rules have been invented after the fact to create the illusion that there's order where none exists. English allows much more "freedom" than many other languages (e.g. German), maybe that's one reason why it has been so successful in the end.
galoisgirl 7y ago
Speak for you're self. /s

nxpnsv 7y ago

I first thought the title implied "Make DL faster by first running on CPU, then on GPU"...

quietbritishjim 7y ago

You think that's a bad language mistake? The title (and the article itself) says that their CPU run is 3.5x faster than GPU. But actually it's 3.5x as fast, which is a radically different thing: "3.5x faster" would mean "4.5x as fast", in the same way that "50% bigger" means "150% times the size" not "50% of the size". Edit: Clearly this is a contentious comment, and even those of us that see things this way mostly seem to agree that we understand the intended meaning (but things get fuzzer with smaller numbers expressed as percentages e.g. "120% faster"). Surely, though, it makes more sense to use the completely precise phrasing "3.5x as fast", especially for the main statement of the main result in an academic paper.

mkl 7y ago
I don't think that's right. I think "two times faster" would mean "twice as fast", not "three times as fast".
- polar 7y ago
  Consider what 1 times faster or 100% faster would mean.
  - amelius 7y ago
    Language doesn't follow logic sometimes.
    - zimpenfish 7y ago
      https://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=463 https://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=463 >> That last reaction incorporates one criticism of Times-er, namely that it is "illogical" or "irrational": X times more than Y MUST MEAN 'Y plus X-times-Y (that is, 'X+1 times Y'), not 'X times as many/great as Y' (that is, 'X times Y'). (In the most common variant of this reaction, X times more than Y is disparaged because it is said to be ambiguous, with both the 'X times Y' and 'X+1 times Y' interpretations.) >> The appeal here is to the idea that ordinary-language expressions are simply realizations of logical (or arithmetical) formulas. This is just backwards. The formulas are there to represent the meanings of expressions; they are not the prior reality, merely cloaked in (those devilishly vague) words of actual languages.

johnlorentzson 7y ago

It can be simplified as "than is a comparison between two things, then is for referring to a time".

ralfd 7y ago

Curiously, this mistake of "than/then", or similar the grating "would of" instead of would've, I only ever see native speakers do.

frabert 7y ago
I think it could be easily attributed to the fact that most non-native speakers learn English at school by studying its grammar in written form, where the two words are distinct. Native speakers, instead, learn English as their spoken language, where the words sound basically identical to each other.
- notRobot 7y ago
  Yes, true. "have" and "of" don't sound same at all in almost all non-native accents which helps.
notRobot 7y ago
True. Non-native speakers learn the language a lot more "explicitly" so they make mistakes like these a lot less often. Another pet peeves: "irregardless" isn't a word. It's regardless. If you don't care about something, you "couldn't care less about it". It's simple logic and yet people mess it up all the time.
- kylebyproxy 7y ago
  I've only noticed it enter common usage recently, but I cringe whenever someone fails at using the word "devoid".
moonbug 7y ago
"would of" and "would've" sound indistinguishable when spoken in many anglophone accents. If it irritates you when you see it written, that just indicates you're a snob.
galoisgirl 7y ago
As a non-native, I learned "then" and "than" in different contexts, months if not years apart. I also learned them in speech and in writing at the same time. Please don't quiz me on how to read bear, pear, tear, fear, spear, clear, and dear.

pishpash 7y ago

It's not not knowing the meaning, it's simply a proofing mistake in phonemic writing. For a native speaker, spelling as it sounds is second nature, making morphological distinctions is harder.

gwd 7y ago

My favorite example of the importance of the difference is https://weheartit.com/entry/22781532 https://weheartit.com/entry/22781532

_gtly 7y ago

People using 'further' instead of 'farther' (used for distance) used to get me upset, but people mistake them so often that I realized I was getting upset for no good reason. I know what they meant even if they were ignorant of the grammar. I agree that in an academic paper you don't want to see grammar mistakes, but in many other contexts if you understand what is meant, it's no use getting bent out of shape.

2zcon 7y ago
I do understand it but, for my colleagues and friends who don't have English as their first language, it adds another caveat to learn and remember without a logical basis. That's another place to introduce ambiguity and errors. I don't get angry at non-standard usage but I think it's important not to ignore the purpose of consistent style.
zimpenfish 7y ago
> people mistake them so often that I realized I was getting upset for no good reason Indeed, because they come from the same root - the difference only came from English peasants and their wacky spellings. https://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=45754 https://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=45754

blackandblue 7y ago

yea very true! and as someone who grew up speaking french, i want people to stop making the viola/voila mistake too. viola is an instrument. voila is what you mean most of the time. also off-topic, but i heard the word senglish, for singaporean english, on a podcast yesterday. that made me realize how english has the potential to become a universal language with each country having their own version. french people already use the term frenglish when they mix english words with french. we could have spanglish, japenglish, germanish, etc. they don't have to be called those though. it would be totally awesome to be able to communicate with almost everyone in the world. just like the internet!

taneq 7y ago

Unfortunately apparently most people could care less.