# Numenta Research Meeting - Dec 9, 2019

**URL:** <https://discourse.numenta.org/t/numenta-research-meeting-dec-9-2019/6898>\
**Category:** Current Research\
**Tags:** research, live\
**Created:** [December 9, 2019, 4:31pm UTC](https://discourse.numenta.org/t/numenta-research-meeting-dec-9-2019/6898 "2019-12-09T16:31:17Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Showing post:** 8

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**Author:** ![CollinsEM](https://yyz2.discourse-cdn.com/flex030/user_avatar/discourse.numenta.org/collinsem/32/160_2.png) [@CollinsEM](https://discourse.numenta.org/u/CollinsEM)\
**Post date:** [December 10, 2019, 11:14pm UTC](https://discourse.numenta.org/t/numenta-research-meeting-dec-9-2019/6898/8 "2019-12-10T23:14:12Z")

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I’ve been thinking for the past couple of weeks that a mini-column might be capable of representing a scalar value. Mostly I was thinking of this in the context of storing a scalar coefficient that could be used to [reconstruct an input signal as a linear combination of basis functions](https://discourse.numenta.org/t/florian-fiebig-interview/6880/3). It occurred to me that there was sufficient resolution in even a sparse representation in a small number of bits (~100) to form effective approximations to a wide variety of input patterns if they were used to essentially scale each of the basis functions at a somewhat coarse granularity. It might even be that some mini-columns utilize a non-linear scale (e.g. logarithmic) to represent a wider range of values.

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