New Math?

There have been some funny things going on regarding numbers, mainly in advertising, but I saw a similar thing in a PBS documentary TV program.

Evidently it's not expected, anymore, that people can understand fractions. Thus you don't or must not say, for example, "This product will cost you one-fourth as much to use." Instead it's expressed as "four times cheaper." To me that does not make any sense and I can only surmise that it means "one-fourth as expensive."

Some actual examples I've seen: "10x softer" (dentures are 10 times softer than teeth). I'm not sure this makes any sense. What are you counting down from? There is no "softness" scale, but there is such a thing as a hardness scale. So, to make good sense, it should be "one-tenth as hard."

Or (this one from PBS), hydrogen is "13 times lighter." Possibly that makes sense but, again, I feel it's expressed backwards and should be "one-thirteenth as heavy."

This one takes the cake for being meaningless: A certain product being pitched on TV "reduces body fat by over 200%." Well, you can reduce something by a certain percentage, but only up to a little over 99%. You get to 100% and it's all gone. So how can anything be reduced by 200%?

This should fall under the headings of how ridiculous and deceptive advertising is, and how things are dumbed down for the average boob-in-the-street. Another instance of the dumbing down of (or to) Americans?

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