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The "order of magnitude" discussion illustrates a sneaky pitfall in
researching esoteric terminology. If you look up definitions written
by people who genuinely know and use the terms, they are often wrong.
Most people just do not know how to make a definition. Most people
are aware of that, but many people in science, engineering, and
mathematics think they are good at framing definitions when they
aren't.
A common misdefinition of "order of magnitude" is to define it as "a
factor of ten". But the principal idea is that it's a limited range
of magnitude within which some variations are considered significant
and others insignificant (as explored in great depth elsewhere). Very
few people, even in the speech communities where "order of magnitude"
is a precise and living term, will mention the notion of "range" even
though this is essential to their meaning.
On a project a while ago, it was important to clearly communicate the
meanings of the terms "gene" and "allele". As simple as the concepts
are, it is absolute hell to explain the distinctions clearly. In
basic biology classes, gene vs. allele always causes enormous
confusion, and I suspect that half the class never gets it.
Biologists have run into the trouble a lot, so they work very hard at
defining the terms precisely. But even so, it's easy to misunderstand
the definitions. And then you run into this rotten problem. "See? A
gene is X! It says so right here!" where X is true of all genes, but
it's not the distinction that "gene" makes as opposed to "allele".
The mistaken person is now sure of his interpretation, because he
thinks he has authority on his side.
Would anyone like to post some techniques for getting around these
pitfalls? Or other pitfalls you've seen?
One technique that I've used successfully is to look at actual usage,
not just authoritative definitions. Most definitions, even correct
ones, are opaque. By looking at books or articles in which the term
is used, on the assumption that the reader understands it, you get a
much more reality-based feel for how and why the term is used. A
Google Groups search, sorted by date rather than relevance, is often a
very fast way to get a good understanding of an esoteric term.
One more nasty pitfall I've come across is that when you get the
definition right and ask for confirmation from a genuine expert, he
says the definition is wrong. When you probe for what's wrong with
it, he either says things that do not agree with his own usage, or he
says things that don't contradict the correct definition.
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