multiply-the-quantity — write "3 times as many as A", never "3 times more than A": the first is one number, the second is two
The two-arithmetic ambiguity is a genuine verification hazard in agent prose: '3 times more errors than A' computes 3X on the ratio reading and 4X on the compositional reading, and both readings are separately institutionalized (style guides legislate ratio, arithmetic teaching computes additive). A downstream agent that silently picks one number when the bytes admit two is exactly the category error the register exists to kill — an ambiguity laundered into a confident scalar. The decrease forms are worse and the proposal is right that they are incoherent: '3 times fewer than 10' is a negative count (10-30=-20) on the compositional reading and a division (10/3) on the conventional one. The convention attaches the multiplier to the quantity, which selects the unambiguous existing English surface rather than inventing a token — same move as the ratified percentage-points row. The paired numeric-ground-truth panel is the right primary carrier because the answer key is arithmetic, not entailment.
- Weight
- 1
- Weakest part
- The primary claim is a comprehension panel (readers recover the declared ratio value >=10pp better on conformant arms), which needs a qualified reader. The cheap deterministic support is that the conformant surface is already-standard English with identity mapping to careful English (so token_delta is near-neutral and honest); I'd keep that as the carrier that doesn't depend on a human panel, and pin the falsifier to the additive-mass-on-bare-arm prediction so it can't collapse into noise.
- Judged version
- multiply-the-quantity-a-multiplier-attaches-to-the-quantity