Could you explain me this part of GM Larry Kaufman's article on "The Evaluation of Material Imbalances"? This is a stupid question that has more to do with English than with chess, so if other people also think it's stupid I can delete it after I get the answer.

Since English is not my mother's tongue I am not totally sure I understand correctly this part of GM Larry Kaufman's article on "The Evaluation of Material Imbalances".

There are many things I don't understand everywhere, but this thing is particularly important to me so I really want to be sure that I understand it correctly.


  TO SUMMARIZE
  
  To summarize the findings of my research, the basic table of values would be:
  
  
  Pawn= 1      
  Knight =  3.25  
  Bishop = 3.25
  Rook =  5  
  Queen =  9.75
  Bishop pair= +0.5
  
  
  This table agrees with the statistics (within about 1/8 pawn accuracy) in nearly every case tested.
  
  A further refinement would be to raise the knight's value by 1/16 and lower the rook's value by 1/8 for each pawn above five of the side being valued, with the opposite adjustment for each pawn short of five.


If I understood the part "raise the knight's value by 1/16 and lower the rook's value by 1/8 for each pawn above five of the side being valued" then these are the average values of our Knights and Rooks according to our number of Pawns:


If you have 5 Pawns your Knights are worth 3.25 and your Rooks are worth 5
If you have 6 Pawns your Knights are worth 3.3125 and your Rooks are worth 4.875
If you have 7 Pawns your Knights are worth 3.375 and your Rooks are worth 4.75
If you have 8 Pawns your Knights are worth 3.4375 and your Rooks are worth 4.625


Is this correct?

But what I'm really not sure of understanding is the part where he says "with the opposite adjustment for each pawn short of five."

Firstly, does "short of five" mean this?:


1 pawn short of five = 4 pawns
2 pawns short of five = 3 pawns
3 pawns short of five = 2 pawns
4 pawns short five = 1 pawn
5 pawns short of five = 0 pawn


And therefore, does "with the opposite adjustment for each pawn short of five" mean:


this: Lower the knight's value by 1/16 and raise the rook's value by 1/8 for each pawn short of five of the side being valued. ?
or this: Lower the knight's value by 1/8 and raise the rook's value by 1/16 for each pawn short of five of the side being valued. ?


PS: No need to tell me that implementing this in practical play is perfectly useless.
Your interpretation of "for each pawn above/short of five" is correct. Unfortunately, "the opposite adjustment" is vague and could mean either of the two things you suggest.

I would guess that it means the first one, so that the value of a knight decreases by 1/16 every time a pawn is captured and the value of a rook increases by 1/8. If that is true, a simpler way of expressing the values would be that a knight is worth 2 15/16 plus pawns/16 and rook is worth 5 5/8 minus pawns/8.  (Which, as you say, isn't very useful in practice.)