"Over the last 5+ years, Uber has grown by orders of magnitude, with our top line nearly tripling"

Orders of magnitude.

missedthecue a day ago | parent | next [-]

I have noticed that "orders of magnitude" is getting the same colloquial treatment that has long-since happened to "decimated". That is, a departure in common parlance from the technical meaning of the word to one used to communicate a general description of largeness.

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danielmarkbruce a day ago | parent | next [-]

Sure, but the use of "decimated" is used approximately correctly in most cases, even if not precisely right. And it is a cool sounding word, and it's one word.

"Orders of magnitude" is three words when one would do, it's used to sound sophisticated, and it's use is off by... an order of magnitude or so... in many cases

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missedthecue a day ago | parent | next [-]

Hmm... Sometimes decimated is used in ways that are colloquially understandable but actually make no sense at all. For example, "Sadly, my team got decimated in the playoffs". That doesn't even make sense. 1/10th of the team lost the game? What?

	▲	treis a day ago \| parent \| next [-]
		Think it's more like the worst thing that can happen to a Roman army unit happened to us.
	▲	a day ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		[deleted]

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xnx a day ago | parent | prev [-]

For a long time I thought it meant to reduce to 1/10th not by 1/10th.

	▲	kridsdale1 11 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		Yes. As a kid, hearing it used in like GI Joe or something, it always felt equivalent to “massacred”.
	▲	a day ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		[deleted]

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nosman 21 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

That and when people use "exponential" to mean big.

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techgnosis a day ago | parent | prev [-]

He didn't say "Uber has grown by orders of magnitude" == "top line nearly tripling"

They are two separate statements. Maybe some portions of Uber did grow exponentially. Riders, revenue, miles travelled, etc...

He also wants you to know that as part of that exponential growth, top line nearly tripled.

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danielmarkbruce a day ago | parent [-]

You can't give a concrete and nonsensical way Uber has grown 100x (minimum number of "orders") while revenue tripled.

Cannot be miles. Can't be riders. Can't be drivers. Revenue is top line, by definition.

This statement is as bad as the original. There is no need for hyperbolic statements that one doesn't even understand. "Uber has grown significantly" works. Why the need to sound so sophisticated and use terms like "orders of magnitude" ? It erodes trust by signaling "we are full of sh*t".

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mncharity 18 hours ago | parent | next [-]

> has grown 100x (minimum number of "orders")

Two orders of magnitude is 31.6 to 316 (10^1.5 to 10^2.5), so 32x would be sufficient.

Most Uber 5-year growth numbers seem less than 3x. Steelmanning, some programs seem new in 2021 (Uber One, autonomous driving), and thus might have grown more dramatically as they spun up.

But yes, eep. Maybe misuse will, by getting more exposure for the term, eventually get us more people who know and use it properly? Maybe?

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lirolero a day ago | parent | prev | next [-]

He’s basically saying Uber is much bigger than it was 5+ years ago. Revenue almost tripled, and the company added a lot more products, people, and complexity. “Orders of magnitude” here just means “a lot,” not literally 10x or 100x.

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bamboozled a day ago | parent [-]

Then he could just say uber has grown a lot?

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lirolero 6 hours ago | parent [-]

He could have said a myriad of things, but he chose to say that, and what he chose to say isn’t incorrect.

	▲	danielmarkbruce an hour ago \| parent [-]
		yes, it is. It's incorrect, misleading and douchey. If they didn't say "revenue tripled" and you asked people to speculate how much Uber had grown in 5 years given the statement, you'd get a lot of guesses around 100x.

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kingstnap a day ago | parent | prev [-]

They are simply measuring in base 1.7 :^)

Uber has grown 2 orders of magnitude!

	▲	mncharity 18 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		Or base 2. 2^1.5 (2.83) is the low bound on two orders of magnitude base 2. So tripled fits. All this concern, when he merely assumed everyone would realize he meant oom base 2. :P
	▲	danielmarkbruce a day ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		touche.