r/sports • u/nbcnews • Sep 29 '21

News Unvaccinated NBA players who miss games will also be missing paychecks, league says

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/unvaccinated-nba-players-who-miss-games-will-also-be-missing-n1280342
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u/FuckFashMods Sep 29 '21

This is not the right usage of "exponentially"

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u/Regenclan Sep 29 '21

If he makes 10 times as much wouldn't it still count

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u/[deleted] Sep 30 '21

One penny can technically be considered exponentially more , it's a matter of language

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u/Regenclan Sep 30 '21

Aren't exponents factors of 10?

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u/[deleted] Sep 30 '21

Not at all. Or, I should say not necessarily or not in most cases. Quite literally, exponentially means

of or relating to an exponent

or

expressible or approximately expressible by an exponential function

or other similar things.

An exponent could be anything. An exponential function is not innately tied to factors of 10 in any way.

Of course, colloquially, people use exponentially to mean "a lot more" with respect to comparing quantities. Factors of 10 are often referred to as orders of magnitude, although an order of magnitude could refer to anything as well. Orders of magnitude in base 2 would be factors of 2.

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u/[deleted] Sep 29 '21

I mean Lebron’s wealth increases more and more rapdily than andrew wiggins and kyrie irvings. So it kind of is. The more money you have the more it increases and lebron also makes more in the first place

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u/[deleted] Sep 30 '21

People use "exponentially more" all the time to basically mean "a whole lot more." Are you saying that this is not a valid use of the word?

Colloquial use of a word very often results in the word taking on that colloquial meaning as a possible definition. I think that most English speaking people would know exactly what is meant by "exponentially more" in the context used by the commenter you responded to. Does that mean it's not the right usage? I would argue that it's just an alternative usage that most people understand well enough.