question: public double adjustedLog10 ( double val ) { boolean negFlag = ( val < 0.0 ) ; if ( negFlag ) { val = - val ; } if ( val < 10.0 ) { val += ( 10.0 - val ) / 10.0 ; } double res = Math . log ( val ) / LOG10_VALUE ; return negFlag ? ( - res ) : res ; }
target:  Returns an adjusted log10 value for graphing purposes.  The first adjustment is that negative values are changed to positive during the calculations, and then the answer is negated at the end.  The second is that, for values less than 10, an increasingly large (0 to 1) scaling factor is added such that at 0 the value is adjusted to 1, resulting in a returned result of 0.