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

“X = loge y” was originally e^x = y

Look at the second equation for a sec. First, think about y. As x increases linearly, y increases faster and faster. That’s exponential. Now look at x, as y increases linearly, x increases, but it does so slower and slower. That’s logarithmic. The first equation is how the curvature of that trend is denoted. “Loge”