A.R.T.

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Andrew Sharp

A.R.T is the International Air Rail Organisation's blog, with news, articles and comment on all things related to air rail links world-wide. Your comments and thoughts are welcome: for obvious reasons, they will be moderated and may be edited.


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Aug10

How many times less than?

Permalink | 10/08/10 | Categories: State of the ART | by: A Sharp English (UK)

A form of words which seems to have come into use recently is the 'x times less than' type of statement - as in 'He earns 10 times less than I do', or 'Rail passengers are 1500 times less likely to have an accident than motor cyclists'.

Very true, no doubt - but what does it mean?

If I have 100, 10 times more than this is 1000 - that's easy. So is 10 times less than this actually a negative figure, -900? If not, why not?

And if you really mean 'one tenth of' then why not say so? That is clear and unambiguous - a tenth of 100 is 100 divided by 10.

Because I came across '1.6 times less than' recently: this is probably '60% of' but it seemed a bizarre way of putting it. I assume that 'two times less than' is a half, and you wouldn't (presumably!) say 'one times less than'!:crazy:

I would like to see this terminology used several times less than I do!

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