Talk:Log–log plot

Requested move

The following discussion is an archived discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the move request was: pages moved per request. - GTBacchus^(talk) 23:12, 28 December 2010 (UTC)

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Log-log graph → Log-log plot — A "graph" is a representation of a known function, while a "plot" is a representation of points which may or may not have a known functional relationship. "Plot" is more general and reflects the common use of log-log and semi-log plots to analyze data. (Logarithmic scale uses "plot.") Sho Uemura (talk) 21:42, 15 December 2010 (UTC)

• Semi-log graph → Semi-log plot

• The average layman doesn't know the difference; I'm hesitant to veer away from the colloquial definition of "graph". Powers ^T 19:31, 16 December 2010 (UTC)

• "A "graph" is a representation of a known function, while a "plot" is a representation of points which may or may not have a known functional relationship." - in some prescriptivist textbook maybe, but in common usage (even in common scientific usage) that distinction is artifical, unrecognised and little used. Oppose. Knepflerle (talk) 22:58, 16 December 2010 (UTC)
  • My impression is that they are used interchangeably by most people, and so we should use the technically correct term as long as it's recognizable. "Plot" seems also to be more popular: 1010000 Google results for "log-log plot" vs. 108000 for "log-log graph." Sho Uemura (talk) 04:15, 17 December 2010 (UTC)
• Support, like the above commenters, I would have expected "graph" to be more common, but looking at Google Scholar, I find the reverse is true.--Kotniski (talk) 10:05, 23 December 2010 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

financial functions

I don't think the financial function applications described here are helpful. They are not linked to the topic of log-log plots in the text, and cannot readily be linked since they are multivariate equations. There are other wikis for regression analysis. I propose to delete them from here. Gierszep (talk) 03:04, 28 February 2014 (UTC)

Bode plot is also log-log plot?

Should be also added as an example?

--Yurichev (talk) 08:09, 1 August 2015 (UTC)

Rename page without the fancy dash

Correcting an error on another page was complicated by this page using a fancy character for the dash in the title. A simple dash is used in the title for semi-log plot:

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semi-log_plot
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Log%E2%80%93log_plot

The 'dash' character in the title of this log-log plot page appears to be 0xE28093.

The 0xE28093 character isn't even listed here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dash

How one would type it is not clear.

Changing Log–log_plot to Semi-log_plot on a referring page was much more difficult than it needed to be. It was initially confusing when a simple edit from 'log' to 'semi' before the dash resulted in Wikipedia saying the target page (Semi–log_plot) doesn't exist. Oh, I get it now ... someone used a fancy dash in one title, but not the other. Please use standard keyboard characters when it is sensible to do so.

Please rename this page so editors are not frustrated when trying to correct a simple mistake where the wrong type of graph was referenced. -72.71.131.75 (talk) 17:52, 8 March 2020 (UTC)

The character is an en dash. The numbers you point at are its UTF-8 encoding. See here. You can put it right into a URL this way, too: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Log–log_plot. Dicklyon (talk) 21:51, 8 March 2020 (UTC)

This is an old topic that may generate more heat than light:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Village_pump_(technical)/Archive_AG#Dashes_in_article_names

And this log-log talk page gets viewed rarely, possibility by bots, so the post above was probably a waste of time. And now, so is this post -- unless it helps to prevent another frustrated, occasional editor from jumping on a bandwagon that is going nowhere.

The archive above suggests the topic would get no useful traction in a larger venue.

The software already translates for effective case-insensitivity: Semi-log_plot and semi-log_plot arrive at the same page.

The software might also translate for effective equivalence when interpreting dash types.

But I won't waste further breath talking about (or hold my breath waiting for a solution to) a problem that has been known since 2007 or earlier. -72.71.131.75 (talk) 19:01, 8 March 2020 (UTC)

Looking at MOS:DASH, the correct title is if an em en dash is needed for the title. With "semi-log plot", "semi" modifies "log", so a simple dash is obviously correct for that article. With "log–log plot", this is a bit different, since it relates to two axes that each have a logarithmic scale. So I don't see anything wrong here. +mt 21:41, 8 March 2020 (UTC)

Yeah, if by "em dash" you mean "en dash" and by "simple dash" you mean "hyphen". It's not that complicated, people. See MOS:DASH. Dicklyon (talk) 21:46, 8 March 2020 (UTC)

Yes thanks, yes that's what I ment. Use of "simple dash" is to counter "fancy dash". +mt 02:23, 9 March 2020 (UTC)

I'm wondering how this was frustrating or caused you to waste some time. Explain? Dicklyon (talk) 21:53, 8 March 2020 (UTC)

See above. Repeated here:

a simple edit from 'log' to 'semi' before the dash resulted in Wikipedia saying the target page (Semi–log_plot) doesn't exist.

Semi–log_plot should not exist. Nobody goes to the trouble of typing an en dash where a hyphen is correct. On the other hand, it wouldn't hurt, so add it if you want to. Dicklyon (talk) 18:03, 10 March 2020 (UTC)

Many do not go to the trouble of typing an en dash where it is correct. If the issue they are trying to communicate is not dependent upon this level of nuance in the typography, it may not be worth any amount of their trouble to type it — even if they do have a marvelous Mac keyboard. If it offends a typography snob, maybe the reader will learn something about priorities (focusing on the task at hand instead of being distracted by and wasting time on minutiae) along with whatever the author intended to communicate.-72.71.131.75 (talk) 11:26, 11 March 2020 (UTC)

https://www.quotes.net/mquote/90625

Let us redefine progress to mean that just because we can do a thing, it does not necessarily mean we must do that thing.

-72.71.131.75 (talk) 11:56, 11 March 2020 (UTC)

I'm still not getting your point. Nobody is asking you to ever type an en dash; you can get to the article with a hyphen. Where is the issue? Dicklyon (talk) 05:08, 12 March 2020 (UTC)

The bit of pedantry in why it is "obviously correct" that punctuation differs in the page titles is lost on me. I am now discouraged from trying to help when finding a factual error. A "log-log" plot, as stated in the page I corrected, is not the same as a "semi-log" plot. That distinction is much more important than what kind of dash should be used in a page title. I was able to complete the edit without leaving a red link because I am aware that there are various kinds of dashes. Which doesn't mean that I care much very much at all about when each kind should be used.

Maybe if there was a pedant—-approved key on my keyboard, I would have more sympathy for the pedantry. This would have been a non-issue if the wiki software addressed this distracting issue in a way that is transparent to the user -- instead of relying on a multitude of redirect pages, as described in an discussion archived more than a decade ago. Oops ... did my use of the wrong kinds of dashes (in two locations) make this paragraph unreadable?-72.71.131.75 (talk) 11:22, 9 March 2020 (UTC)

My keyboard (on Mac) has had en dash and em dash since the 1984 introduction, since Steve Jobs had studied typography. And I had been using these characters before that in TeX, since Don Knuth had studied typography. Too bad Bill Gates never did. In any case, you don't need to worry much about this, as there are enough style gnomes to fix things, usually. I don't see how the dashes in titles have inconvenienced you, so please explain if so. As to the structural and grammatical difference between log–log and semi-log, that's worth a bit more effort to understand. The en dash here can be read as "versus", while the semi prefix is just there to indicate only one axis is logarithmic. It is equally good and common to write it as "semilog" without the hyphen; maybe we should do that. Dicklyon (talk) 18:03, 10 March 2020 (UTC)

There are none so blind as those who will not see. Explained twice already. I made a simple edit and thought I was done. But I wasn't –—− why not? I wanted to make a simple edit -- replacing three characters with four, not to be bothered with typographic BS. -72.71.131.75 (talk) 03:36, 11 March 2020 (UTC)

Oh, I see you did explain that you changed log–log plot to semi–log plot, not noticing that that was not a hyphen. Got it now. A valid issue, of a near-trivial sort. Personally, I think we were better off without the redirect, as it called your attention to your error, instead of hiding it. Different style of how errors should be detected, I guess. Dicklyon (talk) 05:08, 12 March 2020 (UTC)

The red link issue is resolved with this edit, if that helps. This redirect is tagged with {{R from incorrect disambiguation}} because "Semi–log plot" uses the wrong dash, as discussed above. +mt 02:40, 11 March 2020 (UTC)