What is a logarithmic scale? Why is it more useful for some things than a regular numerical scale?
In: Mathematics
OP, take some time to really digest this concept. Logarithmic plots are used frequently because they’re great ways to condense data into more digestible formats but it’s important as a consumer of data (news media, maybe at work, politics, etc) it’s important to understand what you’re being presented with.
As a general rule, check the units, and the scale on any plot you’re being presented with because people can do all sorts of massaging to still show “accurate” data but in ways that wildly miscommunicate what the data actually presents. My college statistics courses really changed the way I saw the world. It made me a skeptic of any data being presented to me, and I now I ask more questions. That’s a healthy skepticism to have because sometimes you’ll find that after you start to digest the plots, you can make some pretty accurate assumptions about the author’s opinions or beliefs just in how they presented their data, which I’d argue is an objectively bad thing.
I’m ranting on something off topic here, but the main point I was trying to make is that log plots are very useful tools but understand them well so you can be sure you’re not reaching the wrong conclusions just because the data being presented looks a particular way, even if that data is factual, it can be presented in a way that’s misleading.
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