The log is the power!
"Counting the zeros" is the same as saying "what power would I need to raise 10 to in order to get this measurement?" That's important, but hard to remember. The short version of "what power would I need..." is ...
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Likewise, if your chances of winning the lottery are 1-in-a-million ( = 0.000001), we could say that
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You can use the applet below to practice finding the log of easy (non-messy) numbers. Keep at it until it becomes very easy!
log(0.001) =
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perfect ! 0 |
pretty close ... 0 |
not so close 0 |
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