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It's... written right there? Like what? Suppose you send in your marvelous prompt and hit Enter. Machine churns for 18 seconds, types out a "reply", then yiel

It's... written right there? Like what? Suppose you send in your marvelous prompt and hit Enter. Machine churns for 18 seconds, types out a "reply", then yields back control. 18 / 3.6 = 5 So now the machine will only churn for 5 seconds before yielding back control. This is confusing how exactly? Why would an "up to" figure be a mean, or a geometric mean? It's clearly a max, that's why it's called "up to"... Am I missing something?

imtringued 13d ago
No the math is correct and that is how I understood it as well.
jcheng 13d ago
> Am I missing something? If you’re sincerely asking… Mathematically speaking, 18 / 3.6 isn’t “reducing” by 3.6X, it’s “dividing” by 3.6X. Reducing would be 18 - (18 * 3.6), which is obviously wrong. By your formula, “reducing by 50%” would be 18 / 0.5, also obviously wrong. Yes, people do say things like “reduce by 3.6X” and are understood to mean what you said, but they also say “literally” when they mean “figuratively”. It doesn’t bother me but I can understand why math oriented people would be annoyed, and I personally would never say “reduced by 3.6X”, but instead “reduced by 72.2%”.
- perching_aix 13d ago
  I was sincere, because as you point out, the phrasing is not actually ambiguous here. There is only one way to interpret this that is coherent and sensible. The usual % shenanigans weren't even on the table for me. Not that I'd have ever seen "reduced by 0.5x" or any other value below 1x, probably for this very reason. What I do see is "reduced to 0.5x", in which case you're supposed to swap the division for multiplication. Percentages on the other hand are a whole another can of worms, even if these forms are principally interchangeable, and I find them a lot more confusing a lot more often. Not that this would explain the whole mean/geomean thing.
sebzim4500 13d ago
You're missing the part of your brain that wants to be pedantic more than it wants to understand someone.

imtringued 13d ago

No the math is correct and that is how I understood it as well.

jcheng 13d ago

> Am I missing something? If you’re sincerely asking… Mathematically speaking, 18 / 3.6 isn’t “reducing” by 3.6X, it’s “dividing” by 3.6X. Reducing would be 18 - (18 * 3.6), which is obviously wrong. By your formula, “reducing by 50%” would be 18 / 0.5, also obviously wrong. Yes, people do say things like “reduce by 3.6X” and are understood to mean what you said, but they also say “literally” when they mean “figuratively”. It doesn’t bother me but I can understand why math oriented people would be annoyed, and I personally would never say “reduced by 3.6X”, but instead “reduced by 72.2%”.

perching_aix 13d ago
I was sincere, because as you point out, the phrasing is not actually ambiguous here. There is only one way to interpret this that is coherent and sensible. The usual % shenanigans weren't even on the table for me. Not that I'd have ever seen "reduced by 0.5x" or any other value below 1x, probably for this very reason. What I do see is "reduced to 0.5x", in which case you're supposed to swap the division for multiplication. Percentages on the other hand are a whole another can of worms, even if these forms are principally interchangeable, and I find them a lot more confusing a lot more often. Not that this would explain the whole mean/geomean thing.

sebzim4500 13d ago

You're missing the part of your brain that wants to be pedantic more than it wants to understand someone.