. . . times lower than . . .

[Beverly Flanigan]

I share the original concern:  "Five times lower" sounds strange to my ear
and requires mental recomputation every time.  I wonder if this usage has
arisen from a general unfamiliarity with fractional computations?  And
"twice as short" as a 6-inch item would logically mean 12 inches, wouldn't
it?

I don't think we're being old curmudgeons here.  The usage just seems weird!

At 10:57 AM 9/5/2007, you wrote:
>---------------------- Information from the mail header
>-----------------------
>Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
>Poster:       Laurence Urdang <urdang at SBCGLOBAL.NET>
>Subject:      Re: . . . times lower than . . .
>-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>I wrote nothing about what LH calls "absolute" comparisons, for they are fine.
>   But I cannot agree that "half as long" is the same as "twice as short":
> such an equivalency makes no sense to me.  "Twice" means 'two times,' not
> 'half,' and it is beyond me how or why the two have become confused.
>   L. Urdang
>
>Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at YALE.EDU> wrote:
>   ---------------------- Information from the mail header
> -----------------------
>Sender: American Dialect Society
>Poster: Laurence Horn
>Subject: Re: . . . times lower than . . .
>-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>At 8:08 AM -0700 9/4/07, Laurence Urdang wrote:
> >After the initial reading of the beginning of this response, I
> >thought I'd gone daft. My comment about temperature had nothing
> >whatsoever to do with the scales used, and they are entirely
> >irrelevant.
> > Also, I didn't say I don't understand it, just that I consider it
> >an aberrant usage.
> > L. Urdang
>
>For me, it would go along with operations on marked scales--e.g.
>"twice as short" rather than "half as tall/long"; "three times as
>narrow" rather than "one third as wide". On the other hand, absolute
>rather than relative comparisons seem fine:
>
>two degrees lower
>three inches shorter
>one inch narrower
>
>YMMV.
>
>LH
>
> >
> >"Joel S. Berson" wrote:
> > ---------------------- Information from the mail header
> >-----------------------
> >Sender: American Dialect Society
> >Poster: "Joel S. Berson"
> >Subject: Re: . . . times lower than . . .
> >-------------------------------------------------------------------------
> ------
> >
> >At 9/4/2007 09:56 AM, Laurence Urdang wrote:
> >> From a letter in today's Daily Telegraph:
> >> ". . . the murder rate in London is five times lower than some
> >> cities in the United States . . ."
> >> I am not interested in the source or in the sense but in this
> >> typical use of times that has sprung up in the past couple of
> >> decades (according to my observation) with the meaning 'one nth':
> >> in the present instance, in my dialect (!) I should have said, ". .
> >> . is one fifth (of) that in some cities."
> >> I cannot conceive how or why times, which is an indication of
> >> multiplication, not division, has come to mean its opposite.
> >> Am I the only English speaker on earth who has noticed this or is
> >> bothered by it? I have never seen another comment on it.
> >
> >I have noticed it and am somewhat bothered by it, but I do understand
> >it. And it does not seem incorrect mathematically -- that is, given
> >one of the two numbers I can compute the other confidently.
> >
> >> A typical context would be, "The average temperature at the
> >> Antarctic is five times lower than [that] at the Arctic." [Forget
> >> about the truth of the statement, for grammar and truth are unrelated.]
> >
> >Apart from truth, I don't think one can say this about the customary
> >(Fahrenheit, Centigrade) temperature scales -- they do not have the
> >mathematical property (whose name I've forgotten) that allows ratios
> >to be computed. One can apply ratios to the Kelvin scale, with its
> >zero at absolute zero.
> >
> >> In other words, instead of using the appropriate fraction or
> >> percentage indicated, 'one quarter of' becomes "four times lower
> >> than," 'one third of' becomes "three times less than," etc.
> >
> >Joel
> >
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