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" ?
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