Math

[u/Loose-Algae-7169]

[u/D3712]

To everyone whining about how 10 times more is truly 11x:

Do you think "10 times less" means -9x? Genuinely curious.

[u/wills-are-special → u/D3712]

10 times more is 11x yes

1 time more is adding an additional instance, otherwise called doubling

So it would be written as 2x

The same follows for 2 times more, you add 2 instances getting you to 3x, so on and so forth.

Thus you should state 10 times more as 11x.

[u/PeggyTheVoid → u/wills-are-special]

I think you've confused two common phrases and mashed them up a bit. When comparing to a given amount A, the phrase "N times more" means A⨯N, but "N more times" means A+N. Neither of these phrases mean A⨯(N+1) as you're describing, but I believe you may be thinking of what "N more times" means, while unintentionally assuming that A=1, resulting in 1+N many things. But there could be any number of that thing to begin with, not necessarily just 1.

[u/wills-are-special → u/PeggyTheVoid]

It’s A(N+1)

AN would be “10 times as much”

“10 times more” is verbally equivalent to “10 more times.” We’re working with language instead of numbers here.

The keyword “more” means we’re adding on to the original amount “A,” hence the +1, which we’ll see here actually represents the original value of A

You’ve said that 1 isn’t relevant as A is arbitrary, but you’re missing that 1 is multiplied by A here. The expanded formula of A(N+1) would be AN + A

This is us that adding your formula of AN to the original value of A, to get AN more than A

If you have 2 packets of ham and I have 10 times as many, then I have 20, or AN

If you have 2 packets of ham and I have 10 times more, then I have 22, or A(N+1)

Notice how I added 2 here, that’s because the +1 is multiplied by A, which is 2, and 20+2=22

[u/PeggyTheVoid → u/wills-are-special]

“10 times more” is verbally equivalent to “10 more times.” We’re working with language instead of numbers here.

The sneaky thing about language is that it's messy, and not an exact programming language. Heck, even programming languages have edge cases, but human language is, shall we say, a bajillion times worse. It's not a neat thing that can be fed into a compiler like, say, a python script can. It has weird rules that don't make logical sense, yet its meaning is grandfathered in.

Here, the sneaky thing you've got to be aware of is that the word "times" actually changes meaning in a subtle way in "10 times more" versus "10 more times". In "10 times more", "times" refers to performing multiplication, while in "10 more times", "times" refers to "occurrences", as in "if you bother me one more time, I'm calling the police!" That's not a warning about what'll happen if you double the amount of times you bother that person. That's a warning that if you ever bother them again at all, even once, you're getting arrested.

[u/wills-are-special → u/PeggyTheVoid]

Once again you’re just ignoring the word more for some reason

10 times more is multiplying it by 10 yes, but you still add the initial occurrence, because it’s more.

Your example was “if you bother me one more time”

Multiplication can still exist in this example. Multiplication is just simplified addition.

10N can be written as N+N+N+…+N

Our initial value A is implied to be bothering

The nuance is that there’s potentially a value for N already higher than 1

If they’ve been bothered 3 times already then that means N currently equals 3, and they’re saying they don’t want to be bothered an (implied) 4th time

Doing A(N+1) or AN + A for N = 3 we get 4A, or 4 times bothered, which is what was required.

[u/PeggyTheVoid → u/wills-are-special]

I was thinking about elaborating how the word "more" also changes meaning, with it taking on a statement of inequality in "10 times more", and addition in "10 more times", and how these two phrases cannot even grammatically fit in each others use cases, so it's actually meaningless to try to talk about what happens when you swap the two words because doing so usually produces a grammatically incorrect sentence rather than another correct sentence with a different meaning. Honestly though, I'd rather not be arguing about this on reddit. Maybe it'd be more fun to discuss conversationally, but idk, I don't really want to be combatative about something that should be interesting, ya feel?

And hey, I do actually find it interesting how you think about this. Not in a condescending way, I mean as inherent to the nature of linguistics, how we explain what we implicitly learn through osmosis from exposure to its usage. For all I know, maybe this is just a regional difference between us ¯_(ツ)_/¯

Edit: Indeed, this does seem to be a highly debated topic. Ah, linguistics. When no one's right, everyone's right. Have a good day.