Re:Heroku for Science
by Eliezer on Sunday July 27, 2014 @03:40PM
(#8093742)
Hi! This is the Yelling Math Fairy and THE WORD EXPONENTIAL DOES NOT MEAN MORE. IT IT IS A MATH WORD. IT MEANS e^kx. IT MEANS THE SOLUTION OF y' = ky. DOES EACH NEW ASSAY DOUBLE THE TOTAL AMOUNT OF WORK? NO IT DOES NOT. THE ADDED OVERHEAD FOR EACH ASSAY IS LINEAR GROWTH. NOT EXPONENTIAL GROWTH. I KNOW IT SEEMS LIKE A LOT TO YOU BUT THAT DOES NOT MAKE IT EXPONENTIAL. EXPONENTIAL IS NOT A SYNONYM FOR BIG AND EXPONENTIAL GROWTH IS NOT A SYNONYM FOR FAST. THANK YOU.
[ Parent
| on HN ]
Keep fighting the good fight, Eliezer.
To add on: Some words have valuable and specific meanings! We don't have a good substitute word for "exponential" that means the same thing. Please make an effort not to do this!
Re:Heroku for Science
by irollboozers on Monday August 11, 2014 @02:32PM
(#8164525)
Sorry, but in this case, it's actually N^x. Even running PCR and gel analysis requires steps where the time is dependent on the number of samples (e.g. pipetting, walking to the centrifuge, making multiple gels)
Generally speaking, running double the number of samples requires approximately double the amount of work, maybe a little less since you're doing it in bulk.
Are you really saying that going from 10 samples to 11 samples causes a doubling (or 1.2x-ing or tripling or whatever) of the time/work required? That's what exponential means.