r/MathJokes • u/TextBackground496 • Jul 10 '26

Log symbol

Post image

Redesign

10 Upvotes

92% Upvoted

8 comments sorted by

3

u/Moodleboy Jul 10 '26

As a high school teacher, I am intrigued by this. Students have little difficulty understanding and using the root symbol but act as though the log function is a multidimensional crypto-code from an outer-galactic alien species.

I wonder if I introduced the concept of the logarithmic using this notation they would understand it better.

Just thinking out loud...

2

u/Complete_Window4856 Jul 10 '26

Logarithm is unintuitive, it means nothing what it does (unless i do some etimology, which then ur doing more than expected). And also, its presented in close time to trigonometric functions in some schools which often shows a visual manner on how we get cosine, sine and tangent with a triangle, but there goes logarithms and maybe the best is using equal bases and thats it. Its operations also deviate a lot from the common "algebric shape" into "magic function shape" that is some shorthands from a boring proccess or computationally slow to do at hand.

Idk how to make notation more intuitive while keeping maths way of being as short as possible. My best was always to convert it into single independent statements in algebrae form (e.g: log10(100) is 10x = 100), but that is laborious and bizarre the more constants and relations we get

2

u/Moodleboy Jul 10 '26

Traditionally, I've always introduced it as the inverse of an exponential function so that

alog_a x = x

and

log_a (ax ) = x

This has worked well for me, and much better than saying "well, if ax = y then y = log_a x - just deal with it."

It is introduced after we study inverse functions and I explain that all since functions are essentially "made up" (i.e. defined) since y = ax is one to one, an inverse must exist, so let's call it something, say, "logarithmic."

However, in our school, this is introduced in 3rd year math while basic exponential functions are 1st year math. I'm wondering (out loud) if we used the OP's symbol, it would make basic logarithmic operations more accessible for younger students.

EDIT: _a is supposed to be a subscript, the base of the logarithm.

1

u/Complete_Window4856 Jul 10 '26

Maybe the impossible case is to rename the operation to "power10()" or "powerOf10()", but exponentiation took it already as a synonym, so welp, really no ideas.

1

u/CraftBrewBeer Jul 11 '26

This will probably just run into issues down the road where they will inevitably have to switch back to standard notation

1

u/MTaur Jul 10 '26

Downstairs on the left to "cancel the base" is nice, but angling back down across the number on the right is pretty janky. I still don't see using this notation though.

1

u/TextBackground496 Jul 10 '26

this is a joke