3 ms·
The first time grokked what logarithms are good for is when I needed to make nice graph drawing code, which automatically snapped endpoints to nearest full valu
by yetihehe 5y ago
The first time grokked what logarithms are good for is when I needed to make nice graph drawing code, which automatically snapped endpoints to nearest full value. Like when you have data in range 0:1.0, you want min and max of your graph to snap to 0 and 1. When your data is 3:360, graph will snap to 0 and 400.
Conclusion - best way is to show real-world examples of usage, which learner can identify with.
- nextaccountic 5y agoTalking about plotting, in ĺog-linear plots[0], exponentials appear as straight lines. In log-log plots[1], functions of form f(x) = ax^k (monomials) appear as straight lines. For me, I think what clicked is that the log of a number in base 10 measures the length of this number in decimal (as in, the number of digits, possibly off by one) And more generally, log is an exponent that raises the base to a number. For example, ln(5) is the exponent that raises e to 5. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semi-log_plot https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semi-log_plot [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Log%E2%80%93log_plot https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Log%E2%80%93log_plot
- TeMPOraL 5y agoRelated: "6. (Mar's Law) Everything is linear if plotted log-log with a fat magic marker." via http://spacecraft.ssl.umd.edu/old_site/academics/akins_laws.html http://spacecraft.ssl.umd.edu/old_site/academics/akins_laws..... It's deeper than it sounds. Many of the data derived from physical phenomena will follow some polynomial. On a log-log plot, this looks like a squiggly but straight line, and the magic marker smooths out the lower-order terms noise :).