• DiarrheaSommelier@lemmy.ca
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    81
    ·
    1 day ago

    Logarithmically scaled image. I’ll leave the determination of the base of the Log as an exercise for the viewer.

    • Log in | Sign up@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      1
      ·
      3 hours ago

      That’s what I thought, so I investigated.

      The base of the log can be accounted for by a constant scale factor, because, for example, if n is the number of bison,

      log10(n)
      = log10(e^ln(n))
      = ln(n) log10(e) and log10(e) is a constant.
      This change of base is a linear scale on the logs.

      Hence we can just take log 10 of the numbers of bison, and scale the answer by a constant factor which is log10(correct base), getting
      7.778, 2.477 and 4.477
      Scale that by about 2 = log10(100) to match the 5 bison in the middle pictogram, and there should be
      16, 5, 9 bison on a logarithmic scale.

      The diagram is also wrong if it’s logarithmic.