Glossary

When a model states something false as if it were fact — a structural feature of next-word prediction, not a bug that’s been fixed.

The mortgage as a percentage of the property’s value — the number that sets your deposit and often your rate.

The chunk of text a language model actually reads and writes — usually a word-piece, not a whole word — and the unit models are priced in.

The institution behind a currency: it sets policy rates, targets price stability, and banks the banks.

How much text a model can hold in mind at once — prompt plus reply — measured in tokens; run past it and the earliest text falls away.

The yearly cost of borrowing including standard charges, used to compare loans and credit cards.

The all-in yearly cost of a mortgage including fees, designed so offers can be compared like-for-like.

The basket-of-goods index used to measure inflation — what goes in it and what a CPI figure actually claims.

The interest rate a central bank sets on purpose — the lever every other rate in the economy takes its cue from.

One hundredth of a percentage point — the unit finance uses when percentage-point moves are too coarse.

Taking a general model and training it further on narrower data to specialise it — cheaper than training from scratch.

Gross is the amount with everything included; net is what remains after deductions — which is which depends on context.

What a savings rate really pays over a year once compounding frequency is taken into account.

The unit for the gap between two percentages — the difference between 4% and 6% is two percentage points, not 2%.

What money can actually buy — the quantity inflation erodes even while the number in the account grows.

The text (and other content) a model learns from — its source of both capability and bias, and why a "knowledge cutoff" exists.

The slice of your home you actually own: its value minus what is still owed on the mortgage.

The adjustable numbers a model learns during training — often billions of them — that encode everything it "knows".

The world’s reference clock — the time standard every time zone is defined as an offset from.

Goods taxed at a VAT rate of nothing — which is not the same as being exempt, and the difference matters to businesses.

Prices falling across the economy — rarer than inflation, and more feared by the people who set interest rates.

The civil calendar most of the world runs on, introduced in 1582 to stop the seasons drifting through the year.

The act of running a trained model to get an answer — what happens every time you send a prompt, and what you pay for per use.

Paying a loan down with instalments that cover interest first and principal with the rest, on a fixed schedule.

The international standard for writing dates and times — year first, so dates sort correctly as text.

An investment’s return after inflation — the growth in what your money can actually buy.

How often earned interest is added to the balance — yearly, monthly or daily — so it can start earning interest itself.

What an amount of money will be worth at a set date in the future, given a rate of growth.

The original amount of money saved, invested or borrowed, before any interest is added.