what exactly *is* a logarithm and what does it do?

Question

I mean, I’ve used them in algebra many times but I never really understood what it does. Kinda like in biostatistics how I could do the math, but how it worked was beyond me entirely.

So yeah: like what’s this sorcery and what does it do/why do we use it?

In: Mathematics

Answer 1

Here’s how I think about it: loga(b) is the power that makes ‘a’ become ‘b’. Which implies: a^(loga(b)) = b, we don’t even need to know the value of loga(b) in the previous equation, just that ‘a’ multiplies by itself loga(b) times to become ‘b’.