this post was submitted on 18 Aug 2023
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What is the best skill you possess that makes you stand above the average person?

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[–] Interesting_Test_814@jlai.lu 102 points 1 year ago (4 children)

Math (I'm a graduate student). And "exponentially more experienced than the average" means nothing as exponential is a progression, not a comparison between two values.

[–] RampageDon@lemmy.ml 26 points 1 year ago (1 children)

What this person is trying to say is they are exponentially better at being technically correct.

[–] sanguinepar@lemmy.world 14 points 1 year ago (3 children)

Exponentially the best kind of correct by an order of magnitude.

[–] Natanael@slrpnk.net 4 points 1 year ago

Hey now you can't determine orders of magnitude before you know the values

[–] Hadriscus@lemm.ee 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Exponentially correct is the worst kind of magnitude

[–] Dagwood222@lemm.ee 2 points 1 year ago

Your statement is cromulent.

[–] mctit@lemmy.world 5 points 1 year ago

This is one of my biggest pet peeves lol

[–] 5473MP4RRit@sh.itjust.works 2 points 1 year ago (4 children)

serious questions then:

What’s a better mathy adjective to describe what OP meant by β€œexponential”?

[–] zovits@lemmy.world 7 points 1 year ago

Orders of magnitude maybe?

[–] rbhfd@lemmy.world 3 points 1 year ago

I'd go with "significantly".

A simple "a lot" would do fine. "Orders of magnitude" as someone else suggested would work too.

[–] mranachi@aussie.zone 1 points 1 year ago

5sigma from the average person.

[–] absGeekNZ@lemmy.nz 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

My pet peeve with mathy stuff, "something is X times closer/smaller etc than something else"

If A is 1 away, saying B is ten times closer means what exactly? Is B 10 away? 9, 0.1?
I think what most examples are trying to say is that A is ten times the distance to B, but the way it is said if just annoying.

[–] Interesting_Test_814@jlai.lu 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

"Ten times closer" is pretty unambiguously 0.1. What starts getting more confusing is "300% further" which is technically 4 but many understand as 3 (try replacing by 50%, 50% further is 1.5 not 0.5). Also "50% closer" being the same as twice closer while 50% further is only 1.5x further can get confusing too, and it gets even worse with "50% slower" - is speed now 1/1.5 (= it takes 50% more time) or 0.5/1 (= speed is reduced by 50%) ?

[–] absGeekNZ@lemmy.nz 1 points 1 year ago

Most of the time it is pretty easy to know what the winter is trying to imply.

It gets really silly when using big numbers. e.g. a nanometre is 100,000 times smaller than a human hair.