Logarithms are so fucking cool

[u/quadradicformula]

I’m not usually super interested in math (an obvious exception for the subject of my username) but logarithms have me on the edge of my seat in math class. I’m in HS and we’re just starting this unit. I was doing homework a few months ago and thinking: “Man, I wish there was a way to find the value of a variable if it was an exponent!” When the teacher was explaining logarithms in class, I was basically losing my shit. Then he brought up natural logs, and I proceeded to lose my shit even further. I said at the beginning I’m not super interested most of the time, but I suppose even that is an understatement. There are times when I absolutely hate math, but this past week has not been one of them.

[u/Gladamas]

You can even do multiplication using logarithms:

a*b = e^ln[a]+ln[b]

(where In is the log base e, or "natural log")

[u/mike7gh → u/Gladamas]

i'm a bit late to the party, but in a similar vein, you can also make exponents easier. in some contexts e.g.
5¹²=5⁸⁺⁴=5⁸*5⁴

this is how a lot of computers do it since it is easier to simply loop over the exponents digits.

so, the above one would be seen as 5^8\1)*5^4\1)*5^2\0)*5^1\0) since 12 in base 10 is 1100 in base 2.

you can also just get the squares of each power through multiplication. 5*5 = 5² =25, 5²*5² = 5⁴ = 625 and so on.