What does the word scale mean in math?

Answer 1

it deals with proportion.

think of a map ... it has a "scale".

it would be silly to try and create a life-size map of a city, because it would cover the whole city.

instead, they might use a "scale" to say that each inch on the map represents 1 mile in real life.

a model airplane might have a scale of 1:30 meaning that if every measurement on the model were multiplied by 30, then it would be the size of the real thing.

if you scale something by a factor of 10, you make everything 10 times bigger (or further)

a scale factor of 1/10 makes everything 10 times smaller.