Logarithmic Thinking - Part 2


In one of my recent blogs on logarithmic thinking, I had pointed out how research indicated that people who did not know the concept of numbers (like some tribes) and kids who had not yet been taught numbers at school think of numbers in relative terms, as ratios, and not in absolute terms.

At that time, I thought the rest of us who have been taught numbers think in absolute terms, not logarithmically (not in ratios). I realized I was wrong when I was reading Dan Ariely’s blog on diminishing sensitivity. Diminishing what, you ask?

Well, think of how you argue with the subzi wallah when he charges Rs.10 more than earlier times. But you don’t get all worked up if that expensive restaurant down the road increases the price of their dishes by Rs.10. Ariely’s point is that it is the same Rs.10 in both cases: so why do you not care equally in both cases? The answer is diminishing sensitivity: you don’t look at Rs.10, the absolute number. Instead you compare Rs.10 with the price you started with: a ratio, in other words!

This kind of proves that logarithmic thinking (or thinking in ratios) doesn’t go away with education. Because that’s something that’s drilled in by evolution. As they say, “You can take the ape out of the jungle, but you can't take the jungle out of the ape.”

Comments

  1. KumarSeptember 25, 2012 at 8:24 AM

    Good point!

    By the way, apart from your focus - namely that an amount's value is not intrinsic but relative to the commodity which could be vegetable or cosmetics or restaurants, I made another observation in this regard.

    The money value has linkage with social standing and also for making "statements" making. (That is, if I have a higher-ranked car it serves more as a "statement" to the society rather than intrinsic utility.) That apart, in India particularly, many of us still live with feudal attitude. So, we feel tremendous injustice inflicted on us when an auto-rickshaw driver demands Rs 5 more, whereas, we would not even think about reducing the restaurant-visit-frequency, even if the cost goes up in the range of multiples of Rs 100, along with the tip increase in multiples of Rs 10!

    By the way, the old-time American multi-millionaire oil baron Rockefeller, lived his life in dire "poverty in his mind", because he was unbelievably stingy in his personal life. His motto of personal life seemed to be: Every penny had to be saved and every dollar had to remain unspent!! That he went into charity in a big way came much later in his life. Life is strange indeed! :-)

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