5 ms·
> He guesses the ice in the berg is at least 1,000 years old, but could also be exponentially more ancient — even formed as many as 100,000 years ago. That's n
by tromp 1y ago
> He guesses the ice in the berg is at least 1,000 years old, but could also be exponentially more ancient — even formed as many as 100,000 years ago.
That's not exponentially more (which would be a preposterous 2^1000 or 10^1000 years old). It's just 100 times more. Should I stop being annoyed at how media use the word and just accept their alternative meaning of "a lot" ?
- jhrmnn 1y agoThis is how language develops, I’m afraid. But imagine that the age is 10^k where k is something like “age class”. Then indeed the age grows exponentially :)
- serial_dev 1y agoIt still doesn’t grow exponentially, it is just orders of magnitude older. Possibly, because if I read between the lines, their answer is “huh I dunno”.
- parineum 1y agoOrders of magnitude is an exponential measure. 1*10^n
- WithinReason 1y agoso then every change can be called exponential
- serial_dev 1y ago> This chair is 4 years old. Or, maybe 5 years old. Yeah, exponential growth!!!
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- serial_dev 1y agoYes, but where is the growth? They just said that the age of iceberg is 1000 years or maybe older 100.000. There is no exponential growth there, just someone not having any clue about the iceberg wanting to sound knowledgeable about the subject.
- readthenotes1 1y ago10^2 in exponential form... At least he didn't say logarithmically more
- Scarblac 1y agoIt's two numbers. It's a constant increase, you can fit a line between them, but also a degree 10 polynomial or an exponential curve. Yes, it just means "a lot".
- burnt-resistor 1y agoHigh variance/confidence interval. Probably needs some C14 / O18 dating to narrow it down by field researchers gathering samples rather than us speculating from afar.
- escapecharacter 1y agoI agree, you can also say exponential if there's 4 or more numbers.
- Drunkfoowl 1y ago[dead]
- mekoka 1y agoIf we want to express ourselves using exponents, consider that 1000 years (1×10^3) and 9000 years (9×10^3) would be of the same "degree" of ancestry, while 100,000 years (1×10^5) would be of completely different (exponential) significance.
- pestatije 1y agoany exponential can reasonably be approximated to a linear in the right range
- ghssds 1y ago1.01158^1000 ~= 100000 Exponentially more!
- SAI_Peregrinus 1y ago1.0116^10000 ≈ 100000 Journalists tend to just think of it as "a lot more", but since they didn't specify the base of the exponential we can at least find a way to make the article technically correct. There are fun classes that admit incomparable values, such as the Surreal games. If they'd said "the game {1 | -1} is exponentially more than { | }" then it'd be impossible to find a base to make the statement true. There's lots of fun to be had with this sort of math, as you know.
- Frummy 1y ago1000^(5/3)=100 000
- fuzztester 1y agoit's not only the media. it's just a figure of speech, (used like some people (ab)use "literally"), which I am sure you know, considering your profile, or even otherwise. other people than the media use it too: e.g. this Rob Pike post about Go (the programming language, not the game you like): Less is exponentially more https://commandcenter.blogspot.com/2012/06/less-is-exponentially-more.html?m=1 https://commandcenter.blogspot.com/2012/06/less-is-exponenti...
- 867-5309 1y ago1000^1⅔=100000