This seems like just an observation about the less formal nature of colloquial language. We also say things like "70% of people do X", when in actuality the underlying study "extrapolates" from a smaller population via statistical analysis.
All these statements are attempting to do is summarize a more complex/nuanced statement in terms that a lay person can relate to. It could also be that people are deliberately overloading the meaning of the words "size" etc, which is one well known mechanism that cause mutations in languages over time.
>We also say things like "70% of people do X", when in actuality the underlying study "extrapolates" from a smaller population via statistical analysis.
Isn't that approximation because we will never really know how many people exactly do X.
>All these statements are attempting to do is summarize a more complex/nuanced statement in terms that a lay person can relate to. It could also be that people are deliberately overloading the meaning of the words "size" etc, which is one well known mechanism that cause mutations in languages over time.
Are they overloading the meaning of "size" or offloading it? Because again nobody really knows what real size or cardinality of anything is so they offload it to some other future term or meaning just like you said "which is one well known mechanism that cause mutations in languages over time."
I'm not a mathematician but I heard from them say that it is better to use word unbounded than infinite because infinities are tricky.
All these statements are attempting to do is summarize a more complex/nuanced statement in terms that a lay person can relate to. It could also be that people are deliberately overloading the meaning of the words "size" etc, which is one well known mechanism that cause mutations in languages over time.