Grammar problem, help me!

[sallyhoudongmei]

In a grammar book written by a Chinese professor BoBing, I saw two sentences:
This room is three times as large as that one.(1)
This room is three times larger than that one.(2)
The chinese translation of the two sentences are the same in that book, but I can't understand. I think sentence (2) equals: "This room is four times as large as that one.
Help me out, thank you.

[MikeNewYork]

Originally Posted by sallyhoudongmei

In a grammar book written by a Chinese professor BoBing, I saw two sentences:
This room is three times as large as that one.(1)
This room is three times larger than that one.(2)
The chinese translation of the two sentences are the same in that book, but I can't understand. I think sentence (2) equals: "This room is four times as large as that one.
Help me out, thank you.

This subject comes up periodically. Even NES are confused by the two statements.

Everybody agrees that "three times as large as X" means [3 times X].

Technically, three times larger than X means [3 times X plus X] or [4 times X].

But the second is used incorrectly at least as often as it used correctly.