2 ms·

If we were talking about speed instead of size, i think it would be perfectly reasonable to say 9x faster. I'm not sure I agree that 9x smaller is unintuitive.

If we were talking about speed instead of size, i think it would be perfectly reasonable to say 9x faster. I'm not sure I agree that 9x smaller is unintuitive. It makes sense to me.

simondotau 9d ago
"Nine times" literally means multiplied by nine, but here we're dividing by nine. It's not unintelligible (because the corrupted verbiage is so commonplace) but it is needlessly awkward. Like saying "resulted in a size reduction increase of 10 megabytes."
- D-Machine 8d ago
  > "Nine times" literally means multiplied by nine Rather, "nine times larger" means multiplied by nine, and "nine times smaller" means divided by nine. This is basic and not particularly awkward, certainly not more so than e.g. positive/negative correlation, or many much more awkward and more common linguistic constructions, IMO. If you have to edit out words (i.e. context) to argue a phrase doesn't make sense... I am not sure what mental model you have for natural language, exactly, but it certainly isn't a very robust one.
  - simondotau 8d ago
    [flagged]
- dools 8d ago
  Saying something is 9 times bigger is also a shorthand because “times” is a shorthand for repeated addition. You are adding a number “9 times” to make it “9 times larger”. But we don’t say the “adding” part. Likewise if I repeatedly subtract a number 9 times to make it “9 times smaller” I can omit the subtracted bit.
  - simondotau 8d ago
    That interpretation doesn’t make sense. Repeated subtraction does not correspond to division in the way repeated addition corresponds to multiplication.
    - dools 8d ago
      Que? Division is the opposite of multiplication of course it does. If you divide 81 by 9 you subtract 9 from 81 until you get to 0. The number of TIMES you do that is the result “81 divided by 9”.
      - simondotau 8d ago
        This isn’t analogous to repeated addition giving multiplication. You’ve switched from applying an operation nine times to counting how many times an operation can be applied. You chose 81 because it’s the one number that makes your argument appear to work. Try the same reasoning with 80 ÷ 9.
        dools 8d ago
        [dead]
_carbyau_ 9d ago
"faster" relates to speed. Speed is related to time and speed of a thing is usually defined by time. 9x faster speed translates to time/9. There is an extra step of related conversion there. Conversely, 9x [filesize/natural number] is bigger. Every time. At least in the basic maths used by most people. There is no conversion into other units. Therefore "9x smaller" when talking about a natural number like filesize is a nonsense statement in logic terms. If you strive for unambiguous phrasing - which is a significant part of the programming experience - this logical nonsense might well perturb you. But english language is a flexible thing and if the phrase communicates your intent to your audience then that's fine by me.
- deleted 9d ago
  [deleted]
- jonhohle 8d ago
  I think more intuitively for speed - you are multiplying the things per period. If I’m making widgets 9x faster I have 9 x the previous number of units per period of time. To get the amount of time, you invert the ratio to period over units. Multiplying some scale by units per period makes sense and is both linguistically and mathematically sound.
- deleted 8d ago
  [deleted]

If we were talking about speed instead of size, i think it would be perfectly reasonable to say 9x faster. I'm not sure I agree that 9x smaller is unintuitive. It makes sense to me.

simondotau 9d ago

"Nine times" literally means multiplied by nine, but here we're dividing by nine. It's not unintelligible (because the corrupted verbiage is so commonplace) but it is needlessly awkward. Like saying "resulted in a size reduction increase of 10 megabytes."

D-Machine 8d ago
> "Nine times" literally means multiplied by nine Rather, "nine times larger" means multiplied by nine, and "nine times smaller" means divided by nine. This is basic and not particularly awkward, certainly not more so than e.g. positive/negative correlation, or many much more awkward and more common linguistic constructions, IMO. If you have to edit out words (i.e. context) to argue a phrase doesn't make sense... I am not sure what mental model you have for natural language, exactly, but it certainly isn't a very robust one.
- simondotau 8d ago
  [flagged]
dools 8d ago
Saying something is 9 times bigger is also a shorthand because “times” is a shorthand for repeated addition. You are adding a number “9 times” to make it “9 times larger”. But we don’t say the “adding” part. Likewise if I repeatedly subtract a number 9 times to make it “9 times smaller” I can omit the subtracted bit.
- simondotau 8d ago
  That interpretation doesn’t make sense. Repeated subtraction does not correspond to division in the way repeated addition corresponds to multiplication.
  - dools 8d ago
    Que? Division is the opposite of multiplication of course it does. If you divide 81 by 9 you subtract 9 from 81 until you get to 0. The number of TIMES you do that is the result “81 divided by 9”.
    - simondotau 8d ago
      This isn’t analogous to repeated addition giving multiplication. You’ve switched from applying an operation nine times to counting how many times an operation can be applied. You chose 81 because it’s the one number that makes your argument appear to work. Try the same reasoning with 80 ÷ 9.
      - dools 8d ago
        [dead]

_carbyau_ 9d ago

"faster" relates to speed. Speed is related to time and speed of a thing is usually defined by time. 9x faster speed translates to time/9. There is an extra step of related conversion there. Conversely, 9x [filesize/natural number] is bigger. Every time. At least in the basic maths used by most people. There is no conversion into other units. Therefore "9x smaller" when talking about a natural number like filesize is a nonsense statement in logic terms. If you strive for unambiguous phrasing - which is a significant part of the programming experience - this logical nonsense might well perturb you. But english language is a flexible thing and if the phrase communicates your intent to your audience then that's fine by me.

deleted 9d ago
[deleted]
jonhohle 8d ago
I think more intuitively for speed - you are multiplying the things per period. If I’m making widgets 9x faster I have 9 x the previous number of units per period of time. To get the amount of time, you invert the ratio to period over units. Multiplying some scale by units per period makes sense and is both linguistically and mathematically sound.
deleted 8d ago
[deleted]