[math-fun] "exponential" considered harmful
If I hear another TV pundit talk about "exponential" increase in something, when the vast majority of these examples are *polynomial* (usually only quadratic), I'm going to scream. Today, I heard the following nonsequitur: "Do the math. This {whatever] is increasing exponentially ...". Well, I did the math, and it was increasing quadratically, at best. Can we hook an electrode to some lower extremity of each news person/politician to Pavlov them into understanding the true meaning of "exponential" ?
Gasp! Hyperbole from a TV pundit? On Fri, Aug 14, 2015 at 1:46 PM, Henry Baker <hbaker1@pipeline.com> wrote:
If I hear another TV pundit talk about "exponential" increase in something, when the vast majority of these examples are *polynomial* (usually only quadratic), I'm going to scream.
Today, I heard the following nonsequitur: "Do the math. This {whatever] is increasing exponentially ...".
Well, I did the math, and it was increasing quadratically, at best.
Can we hook an electrode to some lower extremity of each news person/politician to Pavlov them into understanding the true meaning of "exponential" ?
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-- Mike Stay - metaweta@gmail.com http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~mike http://reperiendi.wordpress.com
I'm sure that if you write a few letters you can get them to adopt "quadratically", because it sounds just as sciency. In fact you could probably even get them to use "cosmogonically" or "brobdingnagianly" or even "linearly". Brent On 8/14/2015 1:46 PM, Henry Baker wrote:
If I hear another TV pundit talk about "exponential" increase in something, when the vast majority of these examples are *polynomial* (usually only quadratic), I'm going to scream.
Today, I heard the following nonsequitur: "Do the math. This {whatever] is increasing exponentially ...".
Well, I did the math, and it was increasing quadratically, at best.
Can we hook an electrode to some lower extremity of each news person/politician to Pavlov them into understanding the true meaning of "exponential" ?
_______________________________________________ math-fun mailing list math-fun@mailman.xmission.com https://mailman.xmission.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/math-fun
I thought about this, but it might actually make things worse. If you ask a random person-on-the-street, I suspect that the only association they have for "quadratic" is the quadratic formula, which has a square root in it. So now we will get people confusing "quadratic" with "sub-linear". So even "super-linearly" (or the more pedantic/punditic "supralinearly") might have to suffice. At 02:04 PM 8/14/2015, meekerdb wrote:
I'm sure that if you write a few letters you can get them to adopt "quadratically", because it sounds just as sciency. In fact you could probably even get them to use "cosmogonically" or "brobdingnagianly" or even "linearly".
Brent
On 8/14/2015 1:46 PM, Henry Baker wrote:
If I hear another TV pundit talk about "exponential" increase in something, when the vast majority of these examples are *polynomial* (usually only quadratic), I'm going to scream.
Today, I heard the following nonsequitur: "Do the math. This {whatever] is increasing exponentially ...".
Well, I did the math, and it was increasing quadratically, at best.
Can we hook an electrode to some lower extremity of each news person/politician to Pavlov them into understanding the true meaning of "exponential" ?
To be fair, it does cut both ways. Yes, the great unwashed innumerate multitude regularly cottons on to some technical term and gleefully proceeds to abuse it. But that's only retaliation for techies bestowing on common words narrower definitions, which they then sometimes seem to expect the rest of the world to adopt --- average, integrate, differentiate, function, set, category, ring, field, series, ball, dimension, complex, ... Also bear in mind that the average(!) citizen's conception of functional rates-of-growth is probably on a par with the apocryphal native tribal enumeration system comprising "one, two, many" --- maybe "constant, linear, outta sight". WFL On 8/14/15, Henry Baker <hbaker1@pipeline.com> wrote:
I thought about this, but it might actually make things worse.
If you ask a random person-on-the-street, I suspect that the only association they have for "quadratic" is the quadratic formula, which has a square root in it.
So now we will get people confusing "quadratic" with "sub-linear".
So even "super-linearly" (or the more pedantic/punditic "supralinearly") might have to suffice.
At 02:04 PM 8/14/2015, meekerdb wrote:
I'm sure that if you write a few letters you can get them to adopt "quadratically", because it sounds just as sciency. In fact you could probably even get them to use "cosmogonically" or "brobdingnagianly" or even "linearly".
Brent
On 8/14/2015 1:46 PM, Henry Baker wrote:
If I hear another TV pundit talk about "exponential" increase in something, when the vast majority of these examples are *polynomial* (usually only quadratic), I'm going to scream.
Today, I heard the following nonsequitur: "Do the math. This {whatever] is increasing exponentially ...".
Well, I did the math, and it was increasing quadratically, at best.
Can we hook an electrode to some lower extremity of each news person/politician to Pavlov them into understanding the true meaning of "exponential" ?
_______________________________________________ math-fun mailing list math-fun@mailman.xmission.com https://mailman.xmission.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/math-fun
* Henry Baker <hbaker1@pipeline.com> [Aug 15. 2015 07:49]:
If I hear another TV pundit talk about "exponential" increase in something, when the vast majority of these examples are *polynomial* (usually only quadratic), I'm going to scream.
Today, I heard the following nonsequitur: "Do the math. This {whatever] is increasing exponentially ...".
Well, I did the math, and it was increasing quadratically, at best.
Can we hook an electrode to some lower extremity of each news person/politician to Pavlov them into understanding the true meaning of "exponential" ?
[...]
Note that one use of "quadratic" (convergence) actually means "faster than exponential". For example, the rate of convergence of the arithmetic-geometric mean (number of correct digits is doubled at each step) is said to be "quadratic" in about every text about it. This unfortunate terminology leaves no gap(*) for the rate of convergence of, say, Theta series (e.g., sum(k>=0, q^(k^2) ) ). (*)The non-gap is between "linear" (e.g., power series) and "superlinear" (e.g., AGM as above, or the Newton iteration). The source of this confusion is the drastic difference between moving along the square function and _iterating_ it.
participants (5)
-
Fred Lunnon -
Henry Baker -
Joerg Arndt -
meekerdb -
Mike Stay