Pet Peeve of a Pedant

Once-upon-a-time, I taught a course in electroacoustic measurements at McGill. I used to devote an entire 3-hour class to explaining decibels, partly because we use them so often in audio, partly because I had such difficulty wrapping my own head around them when I was starting off, and partly because the reason I and many other people have that problem is largely due to the laziness of others. Yesterday, I found myself being annoyed once again by this laziness as I edited a scan of a document from 1961 to correct it before posting it online… Some background information: We humans generally respond to things logarithmically. Without getting into the math, this means that our reptile brains like multiplication more than addition. For example: if I have $10 in the bank, and you have $100 – and we both win $10 in a lottery, I’ll be happier than you. We both won the same amount of money, but I won 100% of my current balance, whereas you only won 10% of your current balance. Another…