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Re: [jboske] xoi'a
la xod cusku di'e
> My comment about overspecific had to do with why linear and
> exponential specifically. What about quadratic, cubic, other powers,
> tangential, sinusoidal, and so many other possible rates of
> variation? Are linear and exponential all that special?
They are basic ones that come up in common discourse (ih certain
circles). sin is the only one that similarly arises, it is desirable too.
Tangential (always growing but never reaching an upper limit)
would also seem to be useful. Also perhaps logarithmic (i.e.
less than linear in the way exponential is more than linear).
> >mi ja'a xi xoi'a'a plana (my obesity increases linearly)
>
> It can't do that for very long though, assuming obesity is
> proportional to weight. If it isn't, then saying that increase
> is linear is meaningless unless we know what the scale is.
> My objection is that "linearly" does not tell me much here.
Linearity has nothing to do with the scale. What extra information did you
want that's not being provided here? The slope? It sounds like a very odd
criticism.
Is obesity directly proportional to weight? I don't know what
it means to say that my obesity increased today the same amount
that it increased yesterday, which is what a linear increase is.
How do I know if today's increase was the same as yesterday's
(required for linear increase) or whether it was greater than
yesterday's (suggesting perhaps an exponantial increase) or
whether it was less than yesterday's (suggesting perhaps a
logarithmic increase)? My criticism is that you are being
precise about something for which such precision does not make
sense. Unless you say how you measure obesity, talking of linear
increase as opposed to exponential increase doesn't say much.
The same situation can be described as a linear increase in
one variable and exponential in another variable. The weight
might grow linearly and the waist grow less than linearly, for
example. Is obesity proportional to the weight or to the waist?
mu'o mi'e xorxes
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