> On Mon, Feb 14, 2005 at 01:16:44PM -0800, Jerry Friedman wrote: > Ok, so is a "quantum leap" a small amount (because quantum deals > with quantum mechanics) or a large amount, because "spooky things > at a distance" can happen? As near as I can tell, it was a > TV show, any other use is ambiguous. "Quantum leap" is unambiguous. The meaning of the phrase stems from the fact that quantum mechanics state that energy levels are quantized -- there is no way to cause an item on that scale to change its energy by a fraction of a quantum level. The "leap" phrase comes from the concept that it is not possible to have an incremental change in the state of the system -- you either jump a whole energy level or nothing. The general use of the phrase, therefore, refers to a situation in which the state of whatever is being observed changes fairly radically in a relatively short time, rather than incrementally. > As for exponential, how is it wrong? Something 10x greater than > the part before it is the standard, although I suppose it can be > less if you operate in something other than base 10. (As a computer > guy I deal in base 2 quite frequently). I suppose "increasing > logrithmically" doesn't sound as sex. :) Besides, technically "increasing logarithmically" would mean increasing a very small amount for a large change in the quantity under observation. The whole point of logarithms is that they making dealing with exponential changes much easier to calculate. (i.e. multiplying 10 times e times e squared is a pain to calculate by hand, but adding ln10 plus 1 plus 2 is easy) Cheers, Trager