What is a logarithmic scale? Why is it more useful for some things than a regular numerical scale?
In: Mathematics
a straight line is usually better to see than something curved.
if you have/expect exponential laws like y = a * exp(b * x), plotting log(y) vs x gives you a straight line: log(y) = log(a) + b * x .
if you expect a power law like y = a * x^b, plotting log(y) vs. log(x) gives you: log(y) = log(a)+b * log(x)
Also, a logarithmic plot usually makes sense on financial data (where doubling the value is more characteristic than a specific price).
A logarithmic plot can show details to smaller numbers, that would be visually lost on a linear plot where you only see the largest values.
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