At 14:04 18/04/2010 -0700, Arthur Bryant wrote:
A spreadsheet has a number raised to a specified power. Thus 3 to the fourth power would be 3 x 3 x 3 x 3 equals 81. If there are many such multiplications it is better to use logs. Thus the log of 3 would be multiplied by 4. The answer would have the anti-log produce 81. The log is available but the anti-log of the answer is required to produce the numeric answer. How can the spreadsheet be directed to produce the anti-log to allow this?
The logarithm function is the inverse of the exponential function: the definition of the logarithm of a number is the power to which the base has to be raised to give that number. So what mathematical tables used to call an "antilogarithm" was simply an exponential. The inverse of LOG10() is ten-to-the-power; the inverse of LN() is e-to-the-power, or EXP().
But you are making work for yourself here: you can raise 3 to the power 4 in a spreadsheet like Calc more simply using
= 3 ^ 4 I trust this helps. Brian Barker --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [email protected] For additional commands, e-mail: [email protected]
