Increased by a power of 2

[jack]

Dear Science Fiction Author,

I love humorously circuitous circumlocutions as much as the next Three Musketeers fan, but even I have to admit that "increased the rate of those incidents by a power of two" could more easily be written as "doubled". (Or if you mean, by a higher power of two, or if you mean "squared", then I think you're using numbers wrong.)

Love Cartesian Daemon

Comments

[simont]

Taken completely literally, "increased by a power of two" doesn't even sound multiplicative – it suggests to me that if there were A incidents last year and B incidents this year, then they are claiming that B = A + 2ⁿ for some n.

I think surely they just wrote 'power' when they meant to write 'factor', probably because 'power of two' is a common phrase in other contexts and the wrong neuron fired.