I barely understand logarithmic scales. Here’s basically all I know: each notch on a logarithmic scale is labelled to be ten times bigger than the last. It starts at 0, then the next notch is 0.01, then 0.1, then 1, then 10, then 100, then 1000, and so on. You use them for things like exponential growth, to make all interesting parts of the graph fit on one paper.

During the Pandemic, I taught history with the the aid of a timeline. We got a long piece of butcher paper and drew pictures at the correct place when we read about or watched something about a time in history.

My favorite way to teach history is with Animated Hero Classics and graphic novels and Minecraft.

The issue is that nothing happened for billions of years. And then something happened every million years or so. And then every thousand years. Up to the present, which important things are happening every month. How do you represent this on the wall? 99% of your timeline would be empty.

I wonder if this is because of a bias toward recent history, or because more people on the earth means exponentially more things can happen. I don’t know. Like, would people in 1100 think the year 1099 was so much more interesting than the year 1050, just like we would view our last year vs. half a century ago? Or is our global society capable of doing so much more stuff? Is our current society exponentially more interesting? Find me and we’ll have this discussion.

Anyway, here is what I think each notch on a good timeline would be labelled:
December 2024
November 2024
October 2024
September 2024 2024 3Q
2024
2023
2022
2021
2020
2010
2000
1990
1980
1970
1960
1950
1945
1944
1943
1942
1941
1940
1935
1930
1920
1910
1900
1875
1850
1830
1800
1750
1700
1600
1500
1200
1000
500
100
50
30
20
0
100
500
1000
2000
3000
5000
8000
100000
1000000
10000000
10000000000
10000000000000

It’s not exactly mathematically logarithmic… but it’s historically logarithmic.