Log scales and why change looks slower than it is
Launch library · evergreen read
A standard chart, where each equal step up the axis represents the same fixed amount, can make early, small-scale growth look flat and uneventful even when it is actually accelerating steadily underneath. A logarithmic scale, where each step represents a multiplication rather than a fixed addition, corrects for this distortion.
On a log scale, steady exponential growth appears as a straight line rather than a sharply upward curve, which makes it far easier to spot genuine changes in the underlying rate of growth, a curve bending one way or another, that would otherwise be lost inside a dramatic-looking but uninformative slope.
Reading a chart without checking its scale can lead to real misunderstanding, since the same underlying data can look alarmingly steep on one axis and calmly linear on another. Checking the axis before reacting to the shape of a line is a small habit well worth building. That one habit, checking the axis before reacting to the shape of a line, quietly prevents a surprising share of otherwise avoidable misreadings of a chart.