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graphing the logarithm
Mar. 6th, 2018 10:23 amIn ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
hexarchate_rpg, my character is currently teaching an eldritch alien the human notation for graphing logarithms, because decibels are on a logarithmic scale and she wants to talk to it about appropriate singing volume. (In retrospect, starting with exponential notation might've been faster, but I'm committed now.) I find "Kids, if you don't pay attention in algebra class, you won't be able to shush the alien" a hilarious argument, though in meta-gaming terms this level of tangent suggests that I really need to get my character back into a situation where she's communicating with other PCs.
Anyway, I looked up the history of the logarithm graph, which is kind of neat. As far as I can tell, the first person to graph the logarithm function was Leibniz (historically, you first see tables of values and second the relation to the area under a hyperbola). He wrote an article relating the graph of the logarithm to the graph of a catenary, the shape of a hanging chain. There's a simplified version of his figure here, and a modern historical discussion in this book.
hexarchate_rpg, my character is currently teaching an eldritch alien the human notation for graphing logarithms, because decibels are on a logarithmic scale and she wants to talk to it about appropriate singing volume. (In retrospect, starting with exponential notation might've been faster, but I'm committed now.) I find "Kids, if you don't pay attention in algebra class, you won't be able to shush the alien" a hilarious argument, though in meta-gaming terms this level of tangent suggests that I really need to get my character back into a situation where she's communicating with other PCs.Anyway, I looked up the history of the logarithm graph, which is kind of neat. As far as I can tell, the first person to graph the logarithm function was Leibniz (historically, you first see tables of values and second the relation to the area under a hyperbola). He wrote an article relating the graph of the logarithm to the graph of a catenary, the shape of a hanging chain. There's a simplified version of his figure here, and a modern historical discussion in this book.