User talk:The Four Deuces/Archives/2018/February

Orders of magnitude

It was already getting too far off the main topic at the Talk page so I didn't want to comment about this there, but a curious coincidence made it irresistible to mention this. In the sense under discussion ("an order of magnitude greater/smaller"), it's not a range, as in the link you provided; it means, "ten times larger (or smaller)". And it's by no means restricted to tecchies and geeks, the press uses it, too, although usually restricted to somewhat science-y topics, where they expect their audience will get it. By pure happenstance, we have an example of this from CNN just yesterday, on the occasion of the Space-X Falcon Heavy launch. CNN's science journalist Miles O'Brien is giving his reaction to the launch, literally while the "magnitude" discussion at Talk:Holocaust denial is going on, and among other things, he says:^{[at 12:40]} " You know we used to say when Leroy was flying the Shuttle that it was about ten thousand dollars a pound for any pound of anything you put on the Shuttle. Elon Musk is claiming below a thousand dollars a pound. So we're talking about an order of magnitude here, and that changes everything when you talk about space exploration." It was so strange to be watching him saying that while reading the discussion, that I was dying to put it up there, but the conversation was already getting too far afield, so really didn't belong there. But, I thought you might be interested. Happy editing, Mathglot (talk) 02:46, 8 February 2018 (UTC)

Mathglot, thanks, but I don't think it means 10 x less. Obviously though if something is 10 x less, it is in a lower order of magnitude. Note that less than 1,000 could be 900, which is not 10 x less. TFD (talk) 03:03, 8 February 2018 (UTC)