The numbers for the first technology are a little bit off. Its claim of a 50% increase in efficiency is not quite correct...
The basic iron gear wheel recipe costs 2 iron plates and gives you 1 iron gear wheel. That's 0.5 gears per plate.
The next iron gear wheel recipe costs 1 iron plate and gives you 3 iron gear wheels. That's 3 gears per plate.
The technology claims it's a 50% increase...but to go from 0.5 to 3 is a 500% increase!
The numbers get even wonkier when using expensive recipes, since the base recipe costs 4 iron plates for 1 iron gear wheel. That's 0.25 gears per plate.
In that case the next tech up, which still costs only 1 iron plate, gives you a staggering 1100% increase in efficiency!
There's also a consistency issue where the basic iron gear wheels recipe has a big "2" on it but only gives 1 iron gear wheel.