News for hackers. Stuff that matters.

A comment on The public do not understand logarithmic graphs used to portray Covid-19. Parent comment

Re:The public do not understand logarithmic graphs used to p... by _bxg1 on Wednesday May 20, 2020 @06:51PM (#23252936)
They take effort to read even when you know what they are; on top of that it's easy to not notice that they're logarithmic, and I'd bet a lot of people don't even know what "logarithmic" means.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:The public do not understand logarithmic graphs used to p... by jiggawatts on Wednesday May 20, 2020 @07:10PM (#23253087)
In my experience, all of the following words cannot be used in general discourse: Quadratic, linear, logarithmic, exponential, orthogonal, asymptotic, etc...

The second you use any of those words, people's eyes glaze over and there's an audible mumble sigh of "Ugh! Maths!"

It's sad, but it's the way it is.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:The public do not understand logarithmic graphs used to p... by everybodyknows on Thursday May 21, 2020 @12:07AM (#23254696)
I observe that "exponentially", along with "minimal", and "inflection point" are frequently used in the popular press -- wrongly, or at least without understanding of the first, quantitative sense of the term.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:The public do not understand logarithmic graphs used to p... by brokenmachine on Thursday May 21, 2020 @09:53PM (#23267928)
Not once have I heard "inflection point" in popular press.
[ Parent | on HN ]