Problem With Small Numbers

A quote from which I do not remember where and cannot find:

"The problem with small numbers is there are not enough of them to exhibit all behaviors demanded of them."

The original demonstration had something to do with the relation to the number of prime numbers below (x) and log (x). The graphs of these two functions cross infinitely often, but the first crossing was some ridiculously high number (I think it was somewhere along the lines of 10^10^something).


On a related note, graphing extreme or missing numbers can be a hassle. For example, suppose you remove division-by-zero's from a list of values. When you go to graph these, many graphing/charting engines either don't handle missing values, or don't give a lot of options for missing values. An example is missing days in day/time X-axis plots. A work-around is to only plot points and not lines. But the customer sometimes expects lines. (Related: JustMakeItRight) Another ugly work-around is to treat them as zero, and put a disclaimer at the bottom. Sometimes one can simply skip the missing days, with a disclaimer, but this makes the X-axis non-proportional.


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