Even worse, people who say ‘3 times less than’ (which would be n - 3n = -2n) when they mean ‘one third as much as.’ And of course, the worst people of all thin

Even worse, people who say ‘3 times less than’ (which would be n - 3n = -2n) when they mean ‘one third as much as.’ And of course, the worst people of all think that one third is less than one fourth. Personally, I blame the widespread usage of decimal notation rather than fractions. The so-called ‘metric’ system (a misnomer, because every system of measurements … measures) bears a lot of blame here.