Confused as to the correct syntax

The man page for git-rev-parse talks about the way to specify commits back 
from a named commit object.  The following text in this man page tries to 
explain it, but it has confused me more

"A  suffix  ~<n>  to  a  revision parameter means the commit object that is 
the <n>th generation grand-parent of the named commit object, following only 
the first parent. I.e. rev~3 is equivalent to rev^ which is equivalent to 
rev11^1."


Why is rev~3 equivalent to rev^,  surely it is equivalent to rev^^^

Why is rev~3 equivalent to rev11^1, should that not be rev^1^1^1

I don't understand the syntax here - so was looking it up in the man page. Is 
there an error in the page or have I misunderstood something.


-- 
Alan Chandler
http://www.chandlerfamily.org.uk
Open Source. It's the difference between trust and antitrust.