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A maddening construction...
Jul. 2nd, 2016 07:55 pmWARNING: Nit-picky math and language discussion below!
Technical Russian has this construction that drives me nuts (Just one, boss? asks my keyboard, to which I mentally reply, That's not what I said. Hush!)...
Where was I? Oh, yeah...
There's this Russian construction, see, in which parameters being made smaller are having it done using numbers greater than 1, along the lines of (let's pick a line from the current translation):
(Come to think of it, there is a somewhat equivalent misguided construction in English, where a number is said to be reduced by a percentage greater than 100, which pops up every once in a while—mostly in non-technical contexts—but I digress...)
You see, whereas the phrase "the time was increased by a factor of x" is pretty easy to grok, (you multiply whatever the time was by x), when you—or at least I—read that a number is reduced by a factor of x, it's not immediately obvious to me—and, I think, to most techies—that you divide said number by x. Not only that, but it's difficult to get a feel for how large said reductions might be when they are expressed in this manner, and particularly so when several factors appear in a sentence.
For example, do you find it easier to consider reductions by factors of 2.5, 5.12, and 10, or reductions by 60%, 80% and 90% (those being the corresponding percentages).
The calculation is actually pretty simple:
That's. Not. My. Problem.
Cheers...
P.S. Only 800 words to go to my goal for the day!
Technical Russian has this construction that drives me nuts (Just one, boss? asks my keyboard, to which I mentally reply, That's not what I said. Hush!)...
Where was I? Oh, yeah...
There's this Russian construction, see, in which parameters being made smaller are having it done using numbers greater than 1, along the lines of (let's pick a line from the current translation):
выигрыш по времени составляет 2,5 разаwhich, translated more or less literally (given that "выигрыш" in this context is best translated as "reduction") reads:
the time reduction was 2.5 timesor, maybe
the time was reduced 2.5 timesThis dog's breakfast rendering might be made slightly more palatable using the following language:
the time was reduced by a factor of 2.5but even here there are problems. What does it mean for a number to be reduced by a factor of x?
(Come to think of it, there is a somewhat equivalent misguided construction in English, where a number is said to be reduced by a percentage greater than 100, which pops up every once in a while—mostly in non-technical contexts—but I digress...)
You see, whereas the phrase "the time was increased by a factor of x" is pretty easy to grok, (you multiply whatever the time was by x), when you—or at least I—read that a number is reduced by a factor of x, it's not immediately obvious to me—and, I think, to most techies—that you divide said number by x. Not only that, but it's difficult to get a feel for how large said reductions might be when they are expressed in this manner, and particularly so when several factors appear in a sentence.
For example, do you find it easier to consider reductions by factors of 2.5, 5.12, and 10, or reductions by 60%, 80% and 90% (those being the corresponding percentages).
The calculation is actually pretty simple:
Reduction = (100 - [1/reduction factor])%That said, stating the reductions in this way may very well make my translation look "funny" to an editor who thinks that "decreased by a factor of 2.5" is perfectly okay and views my rendering as the product of diseased mind, but hey!...
That's. Not. My. Problem.
Cheers...
P.S. Only 800 words to go to my goal for the day!
