decibel

Terms from Artificial Intelligence: humans at the heart of algorithms

The glossary is being gradually proof checked, but currently has many typos and misspellings.

The decibel scale is used to measure sound levels. It is a logarithmic scale where an increase in 10 decibels means the sound is 10 times louder (as measured by sound energy). This means that a 20 decibel difference represents a sound 100 times louder, etc. The logarithmc scale is used because sounds differ greatly in loudness. For example, a whisper is about 30db, conversation about 60db (one thousand times louder) and a nearby car engine 90db (one million times loder than the whisper!).

Used in Chap. 14: page 215