Constant factor of an array In Elements of Programming Interviews in Python by Aziz, Lee and Prakash, they state on page 41:


  Insertion into a full array can be handled by resizing, i.e.,
  allocating a new array with additional memory and copying over the
  entries from the original array. This increases the worst-case time of
  insertion, but if the new array has, for example, a constant factor
  larger than the original array, the average time for insertion is
  constant since resizing is infrequent.


I grasp the concept of amortization that seems to be implied here, yet they seem to imply that in other cases, a newly allocated array could possess a constant factor smaller than the original array. Is that so? What does "constant factor" mean in this particular context? I'm having trouble understanding what's being said here.
That's probably a typo or poor wording -- in the quote, "has" should be "is".