logarithmic transform

Terms from Artificial Intelligence: humans at the heart of algorithms

Page numbers are for draft copy at present; they will be replaced with correct numbers when final book is formatted. Chapter numbers are correct and will not change now.

Taking the logorithm of data items can sometimes be a useful form of data transformation in several circumstances. A logorithmic transform turns exponential growth onto linear grpwth, so can be useful for long term financial data where value of money gradually reduces in value due to inflation. It can also be used where the variability grows with the size of data items, which is freqently the case for certain kinds of time measurements. If you are measuring time delays often larger values also have larger variability. If the logarithm of data follows the Normal distribution, the data is known as log-normal.

Defined on page 334

Used on Chap. 10: page 207; Chap. 14: page 334

Also known as logarithmic transformation