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Expression "four times saltier than"?


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Expression "four times saltier than"? #16 (permalink) Fri Jul 18, 2008 13:54 pm   Expression "four times saltier than"?		  
Hi Atomos

Welcome to the forum. It's good to have you here.

The thing that disturbs me a little about Nessie's original sentence is the addition of 'at least'. In this particular case, I would prefer the as ... as form of comparison:

" ... is at least four times as salty as ..."
.
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Expression "four times saltier than"? #17 (permalink) Sat Jul 19, 2008 0:10 am   Expression "four times saltier than"?		  
It's an interesting question. Usually, "n times bigger than" seems to denote "n times as big as". But perhaps the teachers' thinking is as follows:
The Teachers, perhaps, wrote:
"n times as big as X" is clear:

1. X is 2m long. Y is four times as big as X. Thus Y = 8m long.

But what does it mean to say "n times bigger than X"? "Bigger" doesn't denote a specific quantity, unlike "as big as".

It might mean "Y is four times bigger (by 101%) than X", for instance; or equally, "four times bigger (by 300%) than X".

Without a specific quantity, "n times bigger than X" is meaningless.


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