In the weekly NY Times column about proper usage, a commenter writes: << A note about "exponential": technically, the term refers to numbers that are increasing by a fixed (compounded) percentage, rather than a fixed amount, per unit of time. So it is entirely possible that the number of schools teaching Chinese has increased by a steady 18% per year from 300 a decade ago to 1,600 today; that would indeed be an exponential increase, though it's unlikely the author of the article did the research to confirm this.
Am I the only one who thinks this comment's writing style looks familiar? --Dan _____________________________________________________________________ "It don't mean a thing if it ain't got that certain je ne sais quoi." --Peter Schickele