What is a logarithmic scale? Why is it more useful for some things than a regular numerical scale?
In: Mathematics
Say you are a caveman who doesn’t care about numbers. You are attacked by a lion one day. The next day, you are attacked by 3 lions. The next day, you are attacked by 9. Then, 27. Then, 81. You can imagine that being attacked by 28 lions vs 27 lions isn’t very much of a difference, but 3*27=81 lions is a legitimate increase in danger.
We want to graph this increase in danger. We set the x axis to 3^x, and the y axis to a regular, linear axis for danger level. You can then draw a straight line to express the relation, instead of a logarithm if the x axis was linear.
If I remember correctly, at some young age the brain understands logarithms implicitly but then forgets. We kinda just know that 10=>100 is a bigger increase than 10=>22.
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