A REVIEW OF LOGARITHMS Many students in high school and in college have a difficult time with logarithms. In many cases, they memorize the rules without fully understanding them, and they sometimes even manage to squeak by a course. Why waste their time on these archaic entities; they are never going to see them again. Wrong! Just when the student breathes a sigh of relief to be done with logarithms, they encounter them again in another course. They are now in trouble because the second ...

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Exponential and Logarithmic Functions Exponential Functions The exponential function with base b, where b > 0, has the following form: f(x) = bx -¥ < x < ¥ where b is a constant. In an exponential function, the base of f(x) is a constant real number, while the exponent is the dependent variable of the function. The graphs of all exponential functions (with a positive base) share similar properties: (1) Since the value of bx is positive for b > 0, the graph of the exponential function ...

Understanding Mathematics by Peter Alfeld, Department of Mathematics, University of Utah What on Earth is a Logarithm? Interestingly, after I had this guide up for a while, this turned out to be the question I was asked most frequently, usually in terms that included phrases like "Greek to me", "beats me", or, as above, "what on earth"... To understand what a logarithm is you first have to understand what a power is. Follow that link first if you don't! OK, you do know what a power ...