Logarithms: Mobile Phones, Modelling & Statistics?

An episode of the Gresham College Lectures podcast, hosted by Gresham College, titled "Logarithms: Mobile Phones, Modelling & Statistics?" was published on June 20, 2024 and runs 52 minutes.

June 20, 2024 ·52m · Gresham College Lectures

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Summary

Logarithms were perhaps once thought of as just an old-fashioned way to do sums on slide rules. But they underpin much of modern life, from modelling the COVID pandemic to Claude Shannon’s mathematical theory of information (which makes mobile phones a reality) and making sense of Cristiano Ronaldo’s crazy Instagram follower numbers. This lecture will explore the basics and history of logarithms, and then show how they are a natural way to represent many models and datasets. This lecture was...

Episode Description

Logarithms were perhaps once thought of as just an old-fashioned way to do sums on slide rules. But they underpin much of modern life, from modelling the COVID pandemic to Claude Shannon’s mathematical theory of information (which makes mobile phones a reality) and making sense of Cristiano Ronaldo’s crazy Instagram follower numbers.

This lecture will explore the basics and history of logarithms, and then show how they are a natural way to represent many models and datasets.

This lecture was recorded by Oliver Johnson on 22nd May 2024 at Barnard's Inn Hall, London

The transcript of the lecture is available from the Gresham College website:
https://www.gresham.ac.uk/watch-now/logarithms

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