People really need to learn the difference between "three times more" and "three times as much"!

[Towlie]

It's common in advertising to say "x times more" (or greater, faster, stronger, etc.) when what's really meant is "x times as much". Advertisers probably do it on purpose since they know they can get away with it. But here's a case where a Yahoo news writer makes that same mistake, or perhaps quotes someone without asking for clarification:

2 children in Texas were given adult COVID-19 vaccines 3 times stronger than what they should have been given, one of their parents said

Two Texas children got adult COVID-19 vaccine doses, which is three times stronger, a parent said.

Julian Gonzalez, the parent of a six-year-old child who got the Pfizer vaccine, told local news station CBSDFW that the family was at a City of Garland health department pop-up clinic on Sunday so the parents could get their vaccines, when nurses told them that the six-year-old child could also be vaccinated if the parents wanted.

Later in the article:

The FDA authorized shots that are a third of the strength of adult doses for the 5 to 11 age group.

If a child's dose is 1/3 of an adult dose then the adult dose is three times as strong as the child's dose, or two times stronger. Three times stronger would be four times as strong.

[marybourg]

1. You're talking about a population that mostly went to high school,

but who don’t know the difference between the subject ‘I’ and the object “me”, giving us such everyday monstrosities as “Me and him went to the store”. And you want them to know the difference between 3 times more and three times as much? LOL

[3catwoman3]

8. It is fascinating to me that no one commits the grammatical atrocity...

…with a singular pronoun. I have NEVER heard anyone say, “Me went to the store,” or, “Him went to the movies.” Never!! And I hope I never do.

I have heard increasing use of “I” as a possessive, as in, “Mary and I’s puppy.”

[marybourg]

10. Yes Well, if me went to the store, then it makes

sense that it's I's puppy. Another new usage is the reflexive, "myself", instead if "I" .I blame this on teachers telling students: " Don't start every sentence with 'I'.

[ret5hd]

2. Turns out, Americans are just really bad at math:

[unblock]

6. rofl! yeah, that's about the size of it!

[moniss]

3. Yes

and also basic things in language and grammar have fallen into the ditch. My particular pet peeve is when people think the words less and fewer are interchangeable. It is very common to hear media people and supposedly college educated people make this mistake. But then again I have come across college graduates, some even in technical fields, who can barely communicate in writing. Spelling even basic words is too much for many of them to accomplish. Old time lawyers must really cringe when they see how awful the grammar, spelling and reasoning is when many of the "new crop" submit case filings. I'm surprised we haven't seen a lawyer submit a query to a judge and ask "RU about 2 rule on my scheduling request BCUZ if not I will keep more time MT?". Ending with an emoji of some sort of course.

[unblock]

5. mrs. unblock and me get really exacerbated when someone don't use they're english proper.

[Jerry2144]

16. Myself

Two hates it when noones spells write or uses Gooder English

[Chille]

4. I'm lost nt

[Qutzupalotl]

9. Think of the starting amount as 100%.

10% more would be 110%.

100% more would be twice as much, or 200%.

When you say “more,” you’re adding to the initial 100%.

When you say “as much,” you’re multiplying or dividing.

[Chille]

11. Thank you! Nt

[NH Ethylene]

7. So this is more a word problem than math itself.

Let's say a dosage of something is 5 grams. 10 times as much would be 50 grams.

But 10 times MORE would be 50 grams plus the initial 5 (10 times more than the regular dosage), so 55 grams.

Am I right or am I missing something?

[Buckeye_Democrat]

17. You got it.

Less extreme multipliers makes the wording more significant.

To say there's 10% more of a product, like laundry detergent in a bottle for example, is vastly different than saying there's 10% as much.

[fishwax]

12. people really just shouldn't use "times more than" at all, unless (a) they're talking about

occurrences rather than rations, or (b) they don't mind being misunderstood. If you're talking about occurrences (I have eaten bananas four times more than you have) it makes sense, but if you're talking about a ratio it's going to be confusing because it combines the multiplication indicator (times) with an addition indicator (more than). For that reason, I agree with your logic about the basic difference between the two. At the same time, though, "more" is also simply a comparison, which is why it is commonly used interchangeably with "times as much as." You can see the logic start to break down when you reduce it to "one time more than," which nobody would ever use in real life unless they were simply talking about occurrences. You might say "I've been to Europe one time more than you have," but you would never say "this trip to Europe cost one time more than my last one."


I used to edit textbooks (including math books occasionally) for a living, and "times more than" is language that we just never used, for exactly this reason. When it came to percentages, though, more than is fair game (i.e. 100% more than = 200% as much as).

[kskiska]

13. All of the above

Also, what really bugs me is "like" and "literally."

"Literally" doesn't seem to even have a meaning anymore, the way people are using it.

[Mister Ed]

15. Aye. Most people now seem to use "literally" to mean "not literally".

It also aggravates me that so many people seem to preface almost every quotation with "like":

So he's like, "That's not proper grammar", and I'm like, "It is too", and he's like, "No, it isn't", and I'm like, "You don't know what you're talking about"...etc. etc. etc.

[sanatanadharma]

14. Language is but Alice in Wonderland seeking reality in words, names, pointers, labels

“When I use a word,' Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, 'it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less. ' 'The question is,' said Alice, 'whether you can make words mean so many different things. ' 'The question is,' said Humpty Dumpty, 'which is to be master — that's all.”

Everyone pretends to be on the same page while in truth existing in separate universes.