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

It is roughly counting the number of 0’s (or digits) in a big number. 1,000,000 is 6 zero’s 1,000 is 3 zero’s. To the question, how many basketballs can you fit in a school bus? You’re looking to get the number of digits correct rather than being within 5% of the actual answer.