Why does it start at 1? How do I display a score of zero?

Bill

On 03/02/2018 16:05, Bill Wright wrote:
Why does it start at 1? How do I display a score of zero?

Bill

Most log graph paper i've seen starts with a y value of 0 and an x value
of 1.

Why would you want an x value of 0?

On Sat, 3 Feb 2018 16:14:56 +0000, Ash Burton
wrote:

On 03/02/2018 16:05, Bill Wright wrote:
Why does it start at 1? How do I display a score of zero?

Bill

Most log graph paper i've seen starts with a y value of 0 and an x value
of 1.

Why would you want an x value of 0?
You have not heard of the big bang?

AB

On 03/02/18 16:05, Bill Wright wrote:
Why does it start at 1? How do I display a score of zero?

Bill
You dont.

IIRC the log of zero is minus infinity




--
"When a true genius appears in the world, you may know him by this sign,
that the dunces are all in confederacy against him."

Jonathan Swift.

On Sat, 03 Feb 2018 16:05:29 +0000, Bill Wright wrote:

Why does it start at 1? How do I display a score of zero?

Bill

Because 10^0 = 1?

--
TOJ.

On 03/02/2018 16:14, Ash Burton wrote:
On 03/02/2018 16:05, Bill Wright wrote:
Why does it start at 1? How do I display a score of zero?

Bill

Most log graph paper i've seen starts with a y value of 0 and an x value
of 1.

Why would you want an x value of 0?

Because some of the quantities are zero.

Bill

On 03/02/2018 16:49, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
On 03/02/18 16:05, Bill Wright wrote:
Why does it start at 1? How do I display a score of zero?

Bill
You dont.

IIRC the log of zero is minus infinity




So all I can do is put the quantities that are zero on the bottom line?

Bill

On 03/02/2018 16:05, Bill Wright wrote:
Why does it start at 1? How do I display a score of zero?

Bill

What I'm doing is making a column graph of the numbers of referrals from
about a hundred sources. Some of the sources have referred no work in
the time period the graph covers. Some have referred in single digit
quantities; some in two digits, and some in three. So my scale has to go
from 0 to 1,000. The single digit responses and the zero responses are
quite important because they are the ones where Sales are going to have
to put some work in.

I would have liked to show the zero responses on the graph.

Bill

On 03/02/2018 16:49, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
On 03/02/18 16:05, Bill Wright wrote:
Why does it start at 1? How do I display a score of zero?

Bill
You dont.

IIRC the log of zero is minus infinity





On a UNIVAC-418-III, Octal 777777 was minus zero
(it was ones complement machine :-) )

On Saturday, February 3, 2018 at 6:35:13 PM UTC, Bill Wright wrote:
On 03/02/2018 16:05, Bill Wright wrote:
Why does it start at 1? How do I display a score of zero?

Bill

What I'm doing is making a column graph of the numbers of referrals from
about a hundred sources. Some of the sources have referred no work in
the time period the graph covers. Some have referred in single digit
quantities; some in two digits, and some in three. So my scale has to go
from 0 to 1,000. The single digit responses and the zero responses are
quite important because they are the ones where Sales are going to have
to put some work in.

I would have liked to show the zero responses on the graph.

Bill

Then make a histogram with 'bins' of referral figure ranges. These could be strictly logarithmic, or something a little simpler.

bin 0: 0 referrals
bin 1: 1--10 referrals
bin 2: 11--100 referrals
bin 3: 101 -- 1000 referrals

etc. make the bins finer if you want.

J^n

On Sat, 03 Feb 2018 17:46:55 +0000, The Other John wrote:

On Sat, 03 Feb 2018 16:05:29 +0000, Bill Wright wrote:

Why does it start at 1? How do I display a score of zero?

Bill

Because 10^0 = 1?

More accurately, *any* value to the power of zero is one.

--
Johnny B Good

On 03/02/2018 18:35, Bill Wright wrote:
On 03/02/2018 16:05, Bill Wright wrote:
Why does it start at 1? How do I display a score of zero?

Bill

What I'm doing is making a column graph of the numbers of referrals from
about a hundred sources. Some of the sources have referred no work in
the time period the graph covers. Some have referred in single digit
quantities; some in two digits, and some in three. So my scale has to go
from 0 to 1,000. The single digit responses and the zero responses are
quite important because they are the ones where Sales are going to have
to put some work in.

I would have liked to show the zero responses on the graph.

Why not plot number off referrals plus one... then its s simple task to
adjust when reading the graph.


--
Cheers,

John.

/================================================== ===============\
| Internode Ltd - http://www.internode.co.uk |
|-----------------------------------------------------------------|
| John Rumm - john(at)internode(dot)co(dot)uk |
\================================================= ================/

On 03/02/2018 18:29, Bill Wright wrote:
On 03/02/2018 16:49, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
On 03/02/18 16:05, Bill Wright wrote:
Why does it start at 1? How do I display a score of zero?

Bill
You dont.

IIRC the log of zero is minus infinity




So all I can do is put the quantities that are zero on the bottom line?

Bill

If you would explain exactly what your problem is, perhaps we can help.
You can have log/linear graphs or log/log ones. No problem putting zero
or negative numbers on a linear scale. As TNP points out, the log of
zero is minus infinity, so you need an infinitely large piece of paper
to put zero on it.

On 2018-02-03 19:29, Chris Hogg wrote:
On Sat, 3 Feb 2018 18:35:13 +0000, Bill Wright
wrote:

On 03/02/2018 16:05, Bill Wright wrote:
Why does it start at 1? How do I display a score of zero?

What I'm doing is making a column graph of the numbers of referrals from
about a hundred sources. Some of the sources have referred no work in
the time period the graph covers. Some have referred in single digit
quantities; some in two digits, and some in three. So my scale has to go
from 0 to 1,000. The single digit responses and the zero responses are
quite important because they are the ones where Sales are going to have
to put some work in.

I would have liked to show the zero responses on the graph.

enter them as 0.1, or even 0.01? Then your scale becomes
0.1,1,10,100,1000, or 0.01,0.1,1,10,100,1000


This seems a handy suggestion. You'll get a clear distinction between
the zero and one referral cases and the sources of hundreds of referrals
you're not fussed about will be squashed together.


--
Graham Nye
news(a)thenyes.org.uk

On 03/02/2018 18:35, Bill Wright wrote:
On 03/02/2018 16:05, Bill Wright wrote:
Why does it start at 1? How do I display a score of zero?

Bill

What I'm doing is making a column graph of the numbers of referrals from
about a hundred sources. Some of the sources have referred no work in
the time period the graph covers. Some have referred in single digit
quantities; some in two digits, and some in three. So my scale has to go
from 0 to 1,000. The single digit responses and the zero responses are
quite important because they are the ones where Sales are going to have
to put some work in.

I would have liked to show the zero responses on the graph.


I agree with the suggestion of using less than 1 instead of 0. It makes
them really stand out "below the line".

And, assuming you are using a spreadsheet, you could try plotting with
log base 2 or base 4 rather than base 10 to vary the "squashing" so as
to focus better on the low numbers you want pursued.

--
Robin
reply-to address is (intended to be) valid

On 03/02/2018 20:26, John Rumm wrote:
On 03/02/2018 18:35, Bill Wright wrote:
On 03/02/2018 16:05, Bill Wright wrote:
Why does it start at 1? How do I display a score of zero?

Bill

What I'm doing is making a column graph of the numbers of referrals from
about a hundred sources. Some of the sources have referred no work in
the time period the graph covers. Some have referred in single digit
quantities; some in two digits, and some in three. So my scale has to go
from 0 to 1,000. The single digit responses and the zero responses are
quite important because they are the ones where Sales are going to have
to put some work in.

I would have liked to show the zero responses on the graph.

Why not plot number off referrals plus one... then its s simple task to
adjust when reading the graph.



I don't see why a graph would be useful at all.
A table sorted by referrals with the low values first would indicate
where the work needs to be done or not.
With a graph you don't know where it needs to be done just that it does
need to be done.
There is also the issue of should you waste effort trying to get zero
referrals up rather than getting the lots of referrals up and the graph
won't help at all.

On 03/02/2018 18:28, Bill Wright wrote:
On 03/02/2018 16:14, Ash Burton wrote:
On 03/02/2018 16:05, Bill Wright wrote:
Why does it start at 1? How do I display a score of zero?

Bill

Most log graph paper i've seen starts with a y value of 0 and an x
value of 1.

Why would you want an x value of 0?

Because some of the quantities are zero.

Bill

some of your x values are zero?

the log of zero is minus infinity.

On Sat, 03 Feb 2018 20:05:00 +0000, Johnny B Good wrote:

More accurately, *any* value to the power of zero is one.

I know, but Bill didn't state the base of his logs, I therefore assumed it
was 10.

--
TOJ.

On Sat, 03 Feb 2018 22:55:25 +0000, The Other John wrote:

On Sat, 03 Feb 2018 20:05:00 +0000, Johnny B Good wrote:

More accurately, *any* value to the power of zero is one.

I know, but Bill didn't state the base of his logs, I therefore assumed
it was 10.

I realised you were offering a specific example. I was just clarifying
the point that the rule was a universal one which could be applied to any
base value. :-)

--
Johnny B Good

Or is that the big bung, as practiced by Saudi Arabia for years?
Brian

--
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Blind user, so no pictures please!
"Archibald Tarquin Blenkinsopp" wrote in
message ...
On Sat, 3 Feb 2018 16:14:56 +0000, Ash Burton
wrote:

On 03/02/2018 16:05, Bill Wright wrote:
Why does it start at 1? How do I display a score of zero?

Bill

Most log graph paper i've seen starts with a y value of 0 and an x value
of 1.

Why would you want an x value of 0?
You have not heard of the big bang?

AB

This feeds in to something I never got at school. When there could be -
values in a result how do you make a graph for it?
Brian

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"Bill Wright" wrote in message
news
On 03/02/2018 16:14, Ash Burton wrote:
On 03/02/2018 16:05, Bill Wright wrote:
Why does it start at 1? How do I display a score of zero?

Bill

Most log graph paper i've seen starts with a y value of 0 and an x value
of 1.

Why would you want an x value of 0?

Because some of the quantities are zero.

Bill

Oh dear, this is really a log artefact surely?
its all about getting huge ratios in a display form though.
Brian

--
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"Ash Burton" wrote in message
news
On 03/02/2018 18:28, Bill Wright wrote:
On 03/02/2018 16:14, Ash Burton wrote:
On 03/02/2018 16:05, Bill Wright wrote:
Why does it start at 1? How do I display a score of zero?

Bill

Most log graph paper i've seen starts with a y value of 0 and an x value
of 1.

Why would you want an x value of 0?

Because some of the quantities are zero.

Bill

some of your x values are zero?

the log of zero is minus infinity.

On Sat, 3 Feb 2018 18:36:50 +0000, Andrew wrote:

On 03/02/2018 16:49, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
On 03/02/18 16:05, Bill Wright wrote:
Why does it start at 1? How do I display a score of zero?

Bill
You dont.

IIRC the log of zero is minus infinity


On a UNIVAC-418-III, Octal 777777 was minus zero
(it was ones complement machine :-) )

We had a military environmental test chamber (AKA oven) that had to go from
+85C to -54C at a linear 5 ded./min.
It was slightly out due to the controller going +1 - 0 - -0 - -1 and taking
12s for each degree. Nobody, including the manufacturer, could understand
it.
--
Peter.
The gods will stay away
whilst religions hold sway

On Sat, 3 Feb 2018 17:46:55 +0000 (UTC), The Other John wrote:

On Sat, 03 Feb 2018 16:05:29 +0000, Bill Wright wrote:

Why does it start at 1? How do I display a score of zero?

Bill

Because 10^0 = 1?

In a race, Wiggins had on his shorts "WIGG^o" (superscript "o") - seemed
right, as his number was 1.
--
Peter.
The gods will stay away
whilst religions hold sway

On Sun, 04 Feb 2018 08:26:47 +0000, PeterC wrote:

On Sat, 3 Feb 2018 17:46:55 +0000 (UTC), The Other John wrote:

On Sat, 03 Feb 2018 16:05:29 +0000, Bill Wright wrote:

Why does it start at 1? How do I display a score of zero?

Bill

Because 10^0 = 1?

In a race, Wiggins had on his shorts "WIGG^o" (superscript "o") - seemed
right, as his number was 1.

That would have looked even better if you'd followed up my follow up to
that post. :-)

--
Johnny B Good

On Sun, 04 Feb 2018 08:24:31 +0000, PeterC wrote:

On Sat, 3 Feb 2018 18:36:50 +0000, Andrew wrote:

On 03/02/2018 16:49, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
On 03/02/18 16:05, Bill Wright wrote:
Why does it start at 1? How do I display a score of zero?

Bill
You dont.

IIRC the log of zero is minus infinity


On a UNIVAC-418-III, Octal 777777 was minus zero (it was ones
complement machine :-) )

We had a military environmental test chamber (AKA oven) that had to go
from +85C to -54C at a linear 5 ded./min.
It was slightly out due to the controller going +1 - 0 - -0 - -1 and
taking 12s for each degree. Nobody, including the manufacturer, could
understand it.

I expect you understand it *now* though. :-)

--
Johnny B Good

On 03/02/2018 22:29, Ash Burton wrote:
On 03/02/2018 18:28, Bill Wright wrote:
On 03/02/2018 16:14, Ash Burton wrote:
On 03/02/2018 16:05, Bill Wright wrote:
Why does it start at 1? How do I display a score of zero?

Bill

Most log graph paper i've seen starts with a y value of 0 and an x
value of 1.

Why would you want an x value of 0?

Because some of the quantities are zero.

Bill

some of your x values are zero?

the log of zero is minus infinity.

I'm plotting the number of responses from about 100 sources. The number
of responses varies from 0 to 867.

Bill

On 03/02/2018 21:05, newshound wrote:

If you would explain exactly what your problem is, perhaps we can help.
You can have log/linear graphs or log/log ones. No problem putting zero
or negative numbers on a linear scale. As TNP points out, the log of
zero is minus infinity, so you need an infinitely large piece of paper
to put zero on it.

The responses vary from no response (0) to 867 responses. Because a lot
of the responses are in single figures and quite a few are in double
figures I need to show them accurately. A linear scale of 0 to 1,000
would have all the low responses crammed at the bottom. That's no good
because the difference between, say, 2 responses and 7 responses is
important.

Bill

On 03/02/2018 22:55, The Other John wrote:
On Sat, 03 Feb 2018 20:05:00 +0000, Johnny B Good wrote:

More accurately, *any* value to the power of zero is one.

I know, but Bill didn't state the base of his logs, I therefore assumed it
was 10.


Yes it's ten.

Bill

On 03/02/2018 19:29, Chris Hogg wrote:

enter them as 0.1, or even 0.01? Then your scale becomes
0.1,1,10,100,1000, or 0.01,0.1,1,10,100,1000

Well yes, but it doesn't seem right. I might have a non-log section at
the bottom between 1 and 0, and mark it as such.

Bill

On 03/02/2018 19:59, jkn wrote:

I would have liked to show the zero responses on the graph.

Bill

Then make a histogram with 'bins' of referral figure ranges. These could be strictly logarithmic, or something a little simpler.

bin 0: 0 referrals
bin 1: 1--10 referrals
bin 2: 11--100 referrals
bin 3: 101 -- 1000 referrals

etc. make the bins finer if you want.

J^n

Problem is the bins would have to be just one integer because the sales
people want to see the difference between, say, two and three referrals.

Bill

On 03/02/2018 20:26, John Rumm wrote:

I would have liked to show the zero responses on the graph.

Why not plot number off referrals plus one... then its s simple task to
adjust when reading the graph.


Yes that would work.

Bill

On 04/02/2018 20:45, Bill Wright wrote:
On 03/02/2018 21:05, newshound wrote:

If you would explain exactly what your problem is, perhaps we can
help. You can have log/linear graphs or log/log ones. No problem
putting zero or negative numbers on a linear scale. As TNP points out,
the log of zero is minus infinity, so you need an infinitely large
piece of paper to put zero on it.

The responses vary from no response (0) to 867 responses. Because a lot
of the responses are in single figures and quite a few are in double
figures I need to show them accurately. A linear scale of 0 to 1,000
would have all the low responses crammed at the bottom. That's no good
because the difference between, say, 2 responses and 7 responses is
important.

Bill

Others have suggested two perfectly adequate fixes. But if you really
insist on putting zero on a truly logarithmic scale then it *has* to be
at minus infinity.

On 04/02/2018 21:03, newshound wrote:

Others have suggested two perfectly adequate fixes.

Yes I know, I've seen them, but even so I thought it courteous to reply
to your question.

But if you really
insist on putting zero on a truly logarithmic scale then it *has* to be
at minus infinity.

I don't insist on anything. I posed the question because my maths
knowledge is poor and I wondered what the maths experts here would make
of it. They have as you say provided several solutions. So everybody,
except maybe you, is happy.

Bill

On Sunday, February 4, 2018 at 8:51:37 PM UTC, Bill Wright wrote:
On 03/02/2018 19:59, jkn wrote:

I would have liked to show the zero responses on the graph.

Bill

Then make a histogram with 'bins' of referral figure ranges. These could be strictly logarithmic, or something a little simpler.

bin 0: 0 referrals
bin 1: 1--10 referrals
bin 2: 11--100 referrals
bin 3: 101 -- 1000 referrals

etc. make the bins finer if you want.

J^n

Problem is the bins would have to be just one integer because the sales
people want to see the difference between, say, two and three referrals.

Bill

.... which is pretty foolish IMO, if the number of referrals covers the range
you suggest. They want to look at the data in far finer detail than it warrants.

On Sun, 4 Feb 2018 20:48:53 +0000
Bill Wright wrote:

On 03/02/2018 19:29, Chris Hogg wrote:

enter them as 0.1, or even 0.01? Then your scale becomes
0.1,1,10,100,1000, or 0.01,0.1,1,10,100,1000

Well yes, but it doesn't seem right. I might have a non-log section
at the bottom between 1 and 0, and mark it as such.

Surely you don't really need to put a mark on the graph to represent
zero, so the issue of where to put the mark doesn't arise? Just make
a note that the least amount recorded anywhere is one, and maybe
represent that by a change in the colour of the x axis, so a black
axis line and no red bar above it represents zero, while a red axis line
but no red bar above it represents a single response.

On 04/02/2018 20:45, Bill Wright wrote:
On 03/02/2018 21:05, newshound wrote:

If you would explain exactly what your problem is, perhaps we can
help. You can have log/linear graphs or log/log ones. No problem
putting zero or negative numbers on a linear scale. As TNP points out,
the log of zero is minus infinity, so you need an infinitely large
piece of paper to put zero on it.

The responses vary from no response (0) to 867 responses. Because a lot
of the responses are in single figures and quite a few are in double
figures I need to show them accurately. A linear scale of 0 to 1,000
would have all the low responses crammed at the bottom. That's no good
because the difference between, say, 2 responses and 7 responses is
important.

If you were doing it in Excel then adding 1 to your raw values would
cure it so that you can take logs and plot it. I find the can't plot
zero warning in Excel quite annoying since I know that but a lot of
experiments involving high dynamic range pulse counting data frequently
do have zeros in where there is no signal. I catch the error and silence
it but that requires a bit of tricky programming.

The other way would be add a small amount to your data like 0.5 and plot
the zero responses below the "1" line making a mental note that they
should actually be at -infinity rather than where they are plotted.

--
Regards,
Martin Brown

On 05/02/18 08:13, Martin Brown wrote:
On 04/02/2018 20:45, Bill Wright wrote:
On 03/02/2018 21:05, newshound wrote:

If you would explain exactly what your problem is, perhaps we can
help. You can have log/linear graphs or log/log ones. No problem
putting zero or negative numbers on a linear scale. As TNP points
out, the log of zero is minus infinity, so you need an infinitely
large piece of paper to put zero on it.

The responses vary from no response (0) to 867 responses. Because a
lot of the responses are in single figures and quite a few are in
double figures I need to show them accurately. A linear scale of 0 to
1,000 would have all the low responses crammed at the bottom. That's
no good because the difference between, say, 2 responses and 7
responses is important.

If you were doing it in Excel then adding 1 to your raw values would
cure it so that you can take logs and plot it. I find the can't plot
zero warning in Excel quite annoying since I know that but a lot of
experiments involving high dynamic range pulse counting data frequently
do have zeros in where there is no signal. I catch the error and silence
it but that requires a bit of tricky programming.

The other way would be add a small amount to your data like 0.5 and plot
the zero responses below the "1" line making a mental note that they
should actually be at -infinity rather than where they are plotted.

The other option is to use a semilog type response. Abd constrct a
transfer characteristic that is part linear part log.

--
"Anyone who believes that the laws of physics are mere social
conventions is invited to try transgressing those conventions from the
windows of my apartment. (I live on the twenty-first floor.) "

Alan Sokal

Bill Wright writes:

On 03/02/2018 16:05, Bill Wright wrote:
Why does it start at 1? How do I display a score of zero?

Bill

What I'm doing is making a column graph of the numbers of
referrals from about a hundred sources. Some of the sources
have referred no work in the time period the graph covers.
Some have referred in single digit quantities; some in two
digits, and some in three. So my scale has to go from 0 to
1,000. The single digit responses and the zero responses are
quite important because they are the ones where Sales are
going to have to put some work in.

I would have liked to show the zero responses on the graph.

You could plot on a cube-root scale instead. Zero comes out as
zero, 1000 comes out as 10.

--
Jón Fairbairn