Logaritmen igår, idag, imorgon – från historia till klassrum

Abstract

This paper is a literary analysis focused on the history of logarithms and how different ways of introducing logarithms could be perceived by students. This subject matter may be the most difficult for students to grasp in their upper-secondary mathematics education. To explore why that is we examine three questions. ‘How did the concept logarithms develop through the history of mathematics?’, ‘Wherein lies the difficulty of the concept of logarithms?’ and ‘Is there a better way to introduce logarithms than via Euler’s definition?’. We ask these questions to give ourselves, as future teachers in mathematics, the means to better engage with our students regarding this topic. The study is comprised of two main parts. The first highlights the history of the logarithm concept by tying it to milestones which culminates in Euler’s definition as the inverse of the exponential function. The second part explores students’ difficulties with the logarithm concept and how to better facilitate learning for students about the subject matter. The conclusion of the study indicates that there are several ways you could introduce logarithms to make it more comprehensive for students, some of them are more in depth than others. One of the more interesting ways is through the history of logarithms.