30-fold or 30 times? Very big difference between n×30 vs n×2^(30)
I guess I’m being pedantic here but I always thought there was a difference between the two. Oh well.
If I have 2 apples. And you have 10 times as much.
Do you think you have 20 apples, or do you think you have n=2, n*2^(10) = 2048 apples?
As far as I’m aware, 30 fold and 30 times are simply synonymous with eachother.
The “fold” has its equal in the german “fach” which means x*n of the n-fold. The “times” is just a synonymous term that developed too.
I think you might get confused here, because it is usually used in the context of something having increased tenfold, which us often used to describe the result of an exponential growth. Nobody says “it increased twofold”. Outside of scientific topics, language doesnt really refer to exponential growth. As we saw with Covid, it is a concept difficult to grasp for people in general and it is not part of the day to day language.
Other way around, if I have 2 apples and you have 10-fold more, is where I think it gets confusing. I think there are some limited scientific/mathematics contexts where n-fold refers to powers of 2 but that appears to differ from the colloquial meaning which is just a synonym for times.
I thought infectious diseases was one of those contexts, but I guess not.
30-fold or 30 times
They’re synonyms:
fold
suffix
: multiplied by (a specified number) : times
By the way now the title says 45-fold.
And from the article
Some 42,200 people were infected in 2023, compared to 941 during the whole of 2022.
Thanks for letting me know. I thumbed through the article just to make sure and noticed the number was different, but figured if it changed once it would change multiple times and didn’t want to play a pointless game of catch up when my issue was over the use of a term, not the specific number.
I had hoped the WHO would use more scientifically precise language, especially since they’re supposed to be a trusted authority on this subject. I think organizations which muddy the waters on terms like this, intentionally or not, end up damaging to scientific literacy for the average person who might not know the difference. It makes things confusing, especially because -fold is used to mean powers of 2 in some contexts and a reader could end up being misinformed if they came across such a headline on said topic in the future.
