What reason led people to invent logarithms?
2007-06-01 02:31:31 · 3 answers · asked by Anonymous in Science & Mathematics ➔ Mathematics
Napier was the one who invented the logarithms.
Inf fact, he devised a pair of "sticks" with decreasing space between numbers that allowed to multiply by adding distances.
It's more than obviuos that the distances between numbers decreased logarithmically.
The sticks were dubbed "Napier bones" and later on evolved into the "slide rulers" that were so popular before the widespread use of the electronic calculators.
2007-06-01 02:45:34 · answer #1 · answered by Manolo 4 · 0⤊ 0⤋
We might not need walking anymore, now that we have the segue, and the automobile. On the other hand these developments might have predisposed us to the obesity-tilt that a majority of U.S. citizens manifest. Logarithms are an aspect of mathematics as much as exponents are (since logs are exponents). Should we study exponents in math? ...after all calculators can handle them reasonably well too.
2016-05-18 04:44:38 · answer #2 · answered by ? 3 · 0⤊ 0⤋
they transform products into sums and reduce the size of numbers involved
100,000 * 2,000,000 by log is transformed into
5+6.301 They were very usuful in astronomical calculations where the numbers involved are very large
2007-06-01 02:39:25 · answer #3 · answered by santmann2002 7 · 0⤊ 1⤋