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 (×).
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.