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

A good way to think about what a logarithm DOES, is they tell you how “long” a number is. If log(100) is 2, and 1000 is 1 digit longer, log(1000) is 3. The function just also can tell you numbers in between as a smooth function.