4 ms·
> the potential damages caused by a storm increase exponentially—by a power of eight—with increases in wind speed As any CS undergraduate will be able to point
by Jabbles 2y ago
> the potential damages caused by a storm increase exponentially—by a power of eight—with increases in wind speed
As any CS undergraduate will be able to point out, this is not exponential, it's polynomial. Exponential means that damage ∝ a^speed
A good CS undergraduate will be able to point out that this doesn't matter, as the constants involved may well be more important.
- jfengel 2y agoTechnically correct (the best kind of correct). But dictionaries have started to recognize a definition meaning "rapid rate of increase". https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/exponential#:~:text=(mathematics)%20Characterised%20by%20a%20rate,exponential%20growth%20or%20exponential%20decay https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/exponential#:~:text=(mathem....
- NotYourLawyer 2y agoYes, dictionaries are wrong sometimes.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- jfengel 2y agoBy their own goals, they're only "wrong" if people don't actually talk that way. That is their only measure of truth. But yeah, the people who feel ownership of a word often get cranky about semantic drift.
- NotYourLawyer 2y agoI’m somewhere in between a prescriptivist and a descriptivist. But this definition of exponential is just wrong.