It is surprising, but the human brain is wired to think logarithmically, it is only by years of training that our brains get re-wired to do otherwise. Stanislas

It is surprising, but the human brain is wired to think logarithmically, it is only by years of training that our brains get re-wired to do otherwise. Stanislas Dehaene has done a lot of research in this area (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanislas_Dehaene http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanislas_Dehaene). The study of how the brain interprets continuous and discrete signals (for example sound and numbers) has led to the discovery that the neural representation of number is comparable to the slide rule calculators, which was also graduated with a logarithmic scale. See (http://www.unicog.org/publications/Dehaene_WeberFechnerNieder_TICS2003.pdf http://www.unicog.org/publications/Dehaene_WeberFechnerNiede...) It is very efficient to do calculations logarithmically and evolution appears to have optimized our brains (and that of a few other animals) in this respect.