PSY202H5 : logarithms.pdf
Document Summary
In mathematics, special shorthand notation is used to facilitate the presentation of material and to aid in mathematical calculations and proofs. One such shorthand notation involves the case where we want to multiply a number by itself, once, twice, or indeed, n (number of) times. For example, suppose we wanted to determine the product of 4 multiplied by itself six times. This product, which we will call y, can be represented as. This notation, however, becomes extremely clumsy if the number of 4 s is, say, 326. A notation developed to represent this situation is the basis of our first definition. In this definition, n is a positive integer, and it is convenient to restrict a to be a real number greater than 0, a > 0. According to this definition a2 = a*a, a4 = a*a*a*a, and a1 = a. Occasionally, we have cause to refer to the reciprocal of an.
