Linear Scales

Linear Scales

Life is full of measurements, and if you're like me, you expect them to be linear progressions. If I walk across the room, the first foot of the distance across the room is the same as the last. It's visual, it's logical. If something is going to take 5 minutes to get done, the first minute is the same length as the third, or the fifth. It just makes sense.

But so many things don't work that way. The gas gauge on my car, for example. My gauge is digital, with little bars showing how much gas is in the tank. But I can't judge how much gas the last bar represents based on how long the bar before it lasted, which doesn't seem to have any relation to the bars prior to it.

Or my iPhone's battery life. The difference between having 50% and 60% is not at all the same as the difference between 20% and 30%, for example. (The former is much more life than the latter.) The same is true, but probably even worse, in my laptop.

Now, I understand that usage plays a big part here. With my laptop, 10% battery life while playing a Flash application is very different than 10% battery life in standby mode. But when usage is relatively the same, the measurement of the usage should be the same.

The problem with these nonlinear scales is that they lose a lot of their meaning, at least to someone like me. They don't convey the information I want them to. Which is fine, I suppose, except I can't seem to convince myself of that fact. I look at my phone, and see that I've got 27% battery left before I go to bed. I think, well, last night I went to bed with it at 100%, and woke up to it having about 93%, so I'll be fine*.

Next morning, yep: dead battery.

Would it be so hard to make these kinds of measurements into linear scales? Please? 

*These numbers might be slightly off. I don't remember them precisely. I'm just trying to make a general point.