> The one who invented multiplication did not want to add numbers all life
Reminds me of favorite fact from 'The Information'. The original use of logarithms was by human 'computers', literally, people paid to run the calculations to fill tables, which were then printed and sold in books. They used them to turn difficult multiplication and division problems into simpler addition and subtraction (reducing error and effort apparently). Sometimes I think math should be taught with much more historical context!
It's funny because I recently used logarithms for exactly that, just on a computer.
Basically, if you're using a naive Bayes classifier, you may have to multiply really small probabilities. Floating point numbers are not great at multiplying really small numbers. So the trick is to take the logarithm of the probabilities and add them together.
My college professors did a pretty good job of giving some historical context to new ideas when they are presented, but I really wish there was a review class that gave historical context to all of the ideas from arithmetic, algebra, geometry and trigonometry.
Reminds me of favorite fact from 'The Information'. The original use of logarithms was by human 'computers', literally, people paid to run the calculations to fill tables, which were then printed and sold in books. They used them to turn difficult multiplication and division problems into simpler addition and subtraction (reducing error and effort apparently). Sometimes I think math should be taught with much more historical context!