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The Lost Art of Logarithms

lostartoflogarithms.com

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Re: The Lost Art of Logarithms

#201

Post by codesuki »

djmips wrote: post #194
codesuki wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I recently read mathematics for the nonmathematician. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/281821.Mathematics_for_t... Although the math in the book is relatively basic I enjoyed it tremendously because it gives the historical development for everything and even describes the characters of different mathematicians, etc. The historical context helps so much with understanding.

Devlins book - "Mathematics: The Science of Patterns" was similar for me and you might enjoy it in addition to what you previously read. Much better than how I was taught in my schooling.

Thanks for the recommendation, looks promising!

Re: The Lost Art of Logarithms

#202

Post by seanhunter »

saulpw wrote: post #199
seanhunter wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People virtually never say “logarithm” in use though. They either say “log” or they say “lun” for natural log. Notice that both log and lun are one syllable, easy to pronounce etc. Magnitude is an existing and important concept in maths - it would be extremely confusing to just overload it to mean something else.

The log of 3.1m is 6.5. How do you say "10^6.5"? I say "mag 6.5" and it is clear. The Richter scale famously uses "mag 6.5" exactly like this. If that was ever confusing, then we've managed to work past it, and this just expands the Richter scale to cover basically everything.

There's nothing particularly special about the Richter scale in that respect. All logarithmic scales (eg dB) work that way. Both the Richter scale and decibels (and other logarithmic scales) are also famous like other nonlinear scales[1] for being widely misunderstood so I'm not sure a lot of people would think your way is clearer than the current usage, which is just to say "3.1m" if that's what you mean. That said, I like log scales and logarithms in general so if you want to campaign for this scale, knock yourself out. I don't like that you're calling it magnitude though, because magnitude means a specific thing (the first coordinate of a vector in polar or spherical form).

[1] eg the Beaufort scale for wind force

Re: The Lost Art of Logarithms

#203

Post by a2800276 »

zwnow wrote: post #173
-__---____-ZXyw wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In a roundabout way, I wonder does this one fit what you're after: https://bogart.openmathbooks.org/ctgd/ctgd.html And more directly, a quick browse showed up a book called: "Mathematical Notation: A Guide for Engineers and Scientists" which looks like it addresses your issue directly.

The issue is that I dont want to explicily learn all of the notation but step by step, topic related with usecases in the real world...

Could you give a concrete example concerning what sort of notation caused you difficulty in the past? Asking because it seems odd to me that you feel you need to learn „all“ the notation to get started.

Starting in elementary school you slowly build up topics, mathematical intuition and notation more or less in unity. E.g. starting with whole numbers, plus and minus signs before multiplication, then fractions and decimal notation. By the end of high school you may have reached integrals and matrices to work with concepts from calculus and linear algebra…

It makes little sense to confront people with notation before the corresponding concepts are being taught. So it feels like you may have a different perspective on notation as a layperson that are no longer obvious to more advanced learners.

Re: The Lost Art of Logarithms

#204

Post by zwnow »

a2800276 wrote: post #203
zwnow wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The issue is that I dont want to explicily learn all of the notation but step by step, topic related with usecases in the real world...

Could you give a concrete example concerning what sort of notation caused you difficulty in the past? Asking because it seems odd to me that you feel you need to learn „all“ the notation to get started. Starting in elementary school you slowly build up topics, mathematical intuition and notation more or less in unity. E.g. starting with whole numbers, plus and minus signs before multiplication, then fractions and dec…

Set theory comes to my mind as an example. Somewhat understood the notation but books increase the pace so much
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