Explained to 14 yo how you can multiply numbers by adding their logarithms (and divide by subtracting them), and how before calculators this was a cri...
A parent explained to a 14-year-old how logarithms allow multiplication by adding and division by subtracting, and how this technique was a crucial calculation method before calculators existed.
Background
Paul Graham (@paulg) is a well-known tech entrepreneur, venture capitalist, and essayist — co-founder of Y Combinator, the startup accelerator that launched companies like Airbnb, Dropbox, and Stripe. In this post from 2012, he recalls teaching a teenager about logarithms as a practical calculation hack.