When do you use logarithms in real life

T he magnitude of an earthquake is calculated by comparing the maximum amplitude of the signal with this reference event at a specific distance. The Richter scale is a base logarithmic scale, which defines magnitude as the logarithm of the ratio of the amplitude of the seismic waves to an arbitrary, minor amplitude.

The magnitude of the standard earthquake is. Since the Richter scale is a base logarithmic scale, each number increase on the Richter scale indicates an intensity ten times stronger than the previous number on the scale. Read: Why Log is not defined for the negative base.

For example: if we note the magnitude of the earthquake on the Richter scale as 2, then the other next magnitude on the scale is explained in the following table.

Now according to the Richter scale magnitude of the earthquake, there is a lot of bad effect on our environments which may be a danger to the real world. Its details are given below in the table.

This is one of the real-life scenario of logarithms, which must be known. The Real-Life scenario of Logarithms is to measure the acidic, basic or neutral of a substance that describes a chemical property in terms of pH value.

How do we figure out growth rates? A country doesn't intend to grow at 8. This is a logarithmic scale, which in my head means "PageRank counts the number of digits in your score". So, a site with pagerank 2 "2 digits" is 10x more popular than a PageRank 1 site.

How'd I do that? They might have a few times more than that M, M but probably not up to M. We're at the typical "logarithms in the real world" example: Richter scale and Decibel. The idea is to put events which can vary drastically earthquakes on a single scale with a small range typically 1 to Just like PageRank, each 1-point increase is a 10x improvement in power.

The largest human-recorded earthquake was 9. Decibels are similar, though it can be negative. Sounds can go from intensely quiet pindrop to extremely loud airplane and our brains can process it all.

In reality, the sound of an airplane's engine is millions billions, trillions of times more powerful than a pindrop, and it's inconvenient to have a scale that goes from 1 to a gazillion.

Logs keep everything on a reasonable scale. You'll often see items plotted on a "log scale". In my head, this means one side is counting "number of digits" or "number of multiplications", not the value itself. Again, this helps show wildly varying events on a single scale going from 1 to 10, not 1 to billions.

Moore's law is a great example: we double the number of transistors every 18 months image courtesy Wikipedia. The neat thing about log-scale graphs is exponential changes processor speed appear as a straight line. Growing 10x per year means you're steadily marching up the "digits" scale. If a concept is well-known but not well-loved, it means we need to build our intuition.

Find the analogies that work, and don't settle for the slop a textbook will trot out. Thoumasis, C. Views: Share Tweet Facebook. Join Data Science Central. Sign Up or Sign In. Powered by. To not miss this type of content in the future, subscribe to our newsletter. Archives: Book 1 Book 2 More. Follow us : Twitter Facebook. Write For Us 7 Tips for Writers. If you haven't dabbled with logarithms in a while, here's a quick reminder: A logarithm is the power to which a number is raised to get another number.

In general, the higher the entropy, the stronger the password" R. Real Life Examples of Logarithms for Data Scientists As far as data science goes, there are plenty of areas where logarithms crop up: Log odds play a central role in logistic regression.

Every probability can be easily converted to log odds , by finding the odds ratio and taking the log. Notify me of new comments via email. Notify me of new posts via email. Skip to content. The easiest one I can think of right now is the following: Keep dividing the number 8 in the first step and successive quotients in the further steps by 2 till you are left with 0 as remainder and 1 as quotient, and count the number of divisions performed 3 in this case.

Apply log of any base to the entire equation Choosing a base will not affect the solution as its effect will be nullified in the last step Now apply the properties of log to simplify it Using a calculator or log tables, you can compute the term on RHS with ease and you are then just one step short of finding the value of x.

Make sure you are taking the antilog to the same base b as used in computing log. Thank you for reading my first article. Hope you enjoyed it! Like this: Like Loading Next Convert text to mp3 audios. Leave a Reply Cancel reply Enter your comment here Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in:.