It's not just the author. I noticed some years ago that a lot of people have started saying the equivalent of "3 is three times larger than 1" instead of "3 is

It's not just the author. I noticed some years ago that a lot of people have started saying the equivalent of "3 is three times larger than 1" instead of "3 is three times as large as 1" or "3 is two times larger than 1".