Logarithms: The Work of Scotsman John Napier Part II by Chris ODonoghue This is the second of two articles about

the work of the Scotsman John Napier, the inventor of logarithms. To an extent, the electronic calculator has seen a decline in the use of logarithms. Way, way, way back when I was at school, and for the first fifteen or so years of my teaching career, I used logarithms for difficult multiplication and division calculations. They were useful because you added or subtracted logarithms instead of multiplying or dividing their corresponding numbers. The theory behind them is simple if you are 13 or 14 years old or more and have made reasonable progress in algebra. Here we go: n x n = n2 and n x n x n = n3

In other words, n multiplied by itself twice is n to the power of 2 (an index of 2), and multiplied by itself three times is n to the power of 3 (an index of 3). Now multiply the two numbers in two different ways, and we have logarithms almost. n x n x n x n x n = n x n x n x n x n = n5 That is, if you multiply 2 ns by 3 ns, you get 5 ns multiplied together. Wow! In shorthand: n2 x n3 = n5 Notice the clever bit: you have multiplied the number n2 by the number n3 by adding the two indices. You have just worked in logarithms! As with Napiers Bones, addition has been substituted for multiplication. There was some more work to be done, of course, but this simple idea is the basis of what came next. As with a lot of mathematical theory, more had to be done to make logarithms useful in the real world. In the examples above, although we know what 2 and 3 are, we have no idea of the value of n. We get a little closer to usefulness if we put n = 10. Then n2 = 102 = 10 x 10 = 100 and n3 = 103 = 10 x 10 x 10 = 1000 Multiply 100 x 1000 and the result is 100000 which is 105. The number 5 is the logarithm of 100000 (to the base 10) This is a little bit useful, but there is more to do because our logarithms are all whole numbers, and of large numbers, too. Napier had to calculate the logarithm of any number.

A scientific calculator will tell you the value of a logarithm, abbreviated to log. My calculator has just told me that log3 is 0.4771 to 4 figures. This means that 3 = 100.4771 I have now found the log of 2: log2 = 0.3010 so that 2 = 100.3010 (again to 4 figs) Now for the difficult bit: calculate 3 x 2 using logs! 3 x 2 = 100.4771 x 100.3010 = 100.7781 because I have added 0.4771 and 0.3010. The final step is to find the number which has 0.7781 as its logarithm. Back again to the old days before electronic calculators, we had to find logarithms in look-up tables. This last step was completed using tables called Antilogarithms which showed the inverse process. I say this because inconveniently my calculator will not do this inverse process! That shouldnt be a surprise, I suppose, because no one would use logs when they had a calculator in their hand. (They shouldnt use a calculator to do 2 x 3 either!) 0.7781 is the logarithm of 6 because 6 = 100.7781 Ill mention two extra points. I cheated in my example by multiplying two numbers less than 10 which gave an answer less than 10. To deal with numbers less than 1, that is say, 0.3 can be more complicated than I want to tackle here. However, to get to the log of 30, you multiply 3 by 10. The log of 10 is 1 (10 = 101) and the log of 3 is 0.4771, so the log of 30 (3 x 10) is 0.4771 + 1 = 1.4771. Thats enough of that! The other point to mention briefly is e . If you plot the graph of y = ex , the slope of the graph at the point with the value of x is the same as the value of y at that point. Slopes or gradients of graphs have a lot to do with calculus, and so e does too. This is why you can find logarithms to the base e on scientific calculators. They are hidden behind the letters ln which stand for logarithmus naturalis or natural logarithms. Chris ODonoghue is the author of an ebook Mathematics To Do, samples of which can be seen at www.mathematics2do.com. He has also written Charlies Reading Rescue Improve an Older Childs Reading, a book to support poor readers. Details are at www.charliesreadingrescue.com.