A microblog post by @kareem_carr saying "as soon as i saw they were using asterisks for multiplication symbols, i knew we were in trouble", with an image from the "Office of the United States Trade Representative (Executive Office of the President)" showing the mathematical formula $\Delta \tau_i = \frac{x_i - m_i}{\varepsilon * \varphi * m_i}$. The formula show asterisks (*) instead of multiplication signs (×).
I'm missing something. I often use asterisk to indicate multiplication. Clearly you guys are seeing this as implying something troublesome, but I don't know what.
Of course, I also wouldn't trust me to decide tax rates, so there's that.
Asterisks for multiplication are fine and normal and common in typed text. Where it's unusual is in text that's been typeset, where using things like asterisks for multiplication defeat the point of typesetting, It would be like going through all the effort to typeset an equation, but still saying sqrt(x) instead of using the square root symbol.
Thanks! That is sensible. I thought it was inputting something about their methodology.
Which seems to be "ask the nearest clown car, and use the worst idea."
Honestly the worst thing about this equation isn't the fact that they had poor typesetting, it was that they used decorative constants. The ε and φ values they chose just cancel out. The equation is equivalent to (xᵢ - mᵢ) / mᵢ.