[ExI] word usage-picky picky

[William Flynn Wallace]

Actually, John, I was just talking about simple fractions, not exponents.
 "She got a fraction of the estate"  - just too vague.   bill w

On Fri, Jun 12, 2020 at 6:38 PM John Clark via extropy-chat <
extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:

> On Fri, Jun 12, 2020 at 4:10 PM William Flynn Wallace via extropy-chat <
> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:
>
> > *Exponents can be negative.  *
>>
>
> Yes, and in that case the rate of change would be moving faster and faster
> toward zero at an exponential rate.
>
> *> I read where something is a fraction of something else.  Fractions can
>> be 15/7 or 767/5.  Hardly communicating something small.  I suggest 'small
>> fraction'. More clarity in language, please.*
>>
>
> That would not bring more clarity because we're talking about rates of
> change and not constants. A "small fractional" change would be a linear
> change such as Y= nX where n is a constant such as 2/3. A geometric change
> would be Y= X^n. And an exponential change would be Y=n^X. These are 3
> different types of changes with fundamentally different properties.
> Exponential change grows (positively or negatively depending on specifics)
> vastly faster than the other two and should not be confused.
>
> John K Clark
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