[Math and shit] Can anyone explain to me how to do a logarithm by hand?

topic. one of the biggest questions about math, that neither my math teacher or a CS teacher can answer, is how is a log done? How does that log( thing work?

I know how to use a logarithm, but if anyone knows what a logarithm is in essence, please try and explain it.

http://lmgtfy.com/?q=how+the+fuck+do+logarithms+work%3F

Thank you Metal, you have truly and utterly enriched my life. Now the next time I work with logs, I'll remember your wisdom. And the next time I read complaining about how this place is slow and we keep going back to a few small topics, I'll rest easy knowing that I tried to help out, and your all-encompassing genius helped me.

Thanks buddy!

Dang it Metal had to get to it first.

<3 Pariah

fuck I used to be able to do logs in my head...high school knowledge y u no stay with me?

I guess I'll just have to go with the answer of "dude I'm just a musician...what the fuck do I know?"

honestly... Wikipedia might actually help out here

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logarithm

I said "who needs logarythms after highschool, that shit is boring".

*gets in to college of sound technology*

Volume is calculated in decibels.

Decibels are measured on a logarithmic scale...

You have got to be fucking kidding me...

The Adli Corporation wrote:honestly... Wikipedia might actually help out here

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logarithm

My post had a bunch of "how to" links in it.

I was actually expecting one of the comp sic guys to help out, since advanced mathematics is a part of cs. But oh well.

I haven't done any of that stuff in a long time so I don't really remember but I'll take a stab at this. From what I remember, a logarithm is just an exponent or it's a way to solve for an exponent. I mean, that's one way of looking at it. An example would work best here I guess:

10^x = 100 can be rewritten as log10(100)=x

Basically, to find the logarithm, just ask yourself how many times you have to multiply 10 by itself to make it equal to 100. It'd be 2 in this case but this was a simple example and it gets more complicated than this. I'm sure there are formulas you can use to help you do logarithms by hand but I don't remember them off the top of my head.

I think I'm remembering this right. Idk exactly what you were looking for Pariah or if this helped, but that's my two cents on the subject.

Khult wrote:Basically, to find the logarithm, just ask yourself how many times you have to multiply 10 by itself to make it equal to 100. It'd be 2 in this case but this was a simple example and it gets more complicated than this. I'm sure there are formulas you can use to help you do logarithms by hand but I don't remember them off the top of my head.

Yeah, I know that part. The question I'm looking at is, how exactly do you get from "what do I need to raise x to to get y?" to "raise x to n to get y"

It's the intermediate step that annoys me.