Abstract
THESE tables aim at popularising logarithms. Like other four-figure tables they give the logarithms of numbers from 1000 to 9999. While the ordinary tables give these in one opening of two pages by means of difference columns, Mr. McLaren gives all the 9000 entries independently, and so of course without difference columns. His tables consequently occupy nine openings or eighteen pages. Rapid reference to the various openings is made possible by “thumb-indexing,” and for speed there is probably nothing to choose between these tables and the customary ones. There is. a gain in accuracy, both because the use of difference columns is not trustworthy in the last figure, and because of Mr. McLaren's ingenious device of showing the last figure to the nearest third. Whether these tables seriously reduce the skill required for their use as compared with o the customary tables we have some doubt. We think their appeal will be chiefly to those calculators who require slightly greater accuracy: than the customary tables allow and who at present use five-figure tables.
Improved Four-Figure Logarithm Table, Multiplication and Division Made Easy.
By G. C. McLaren. Pp. 27. (Cambridge: At the University Press,: 1915.) Price 1s. 6d. net.
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M., D. Improved Four-Figure Logarithm Table, Multiplication and Division Made Easy . Nature 95, 394 (1915). https://doi.org/10.1038/095394a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/095394a0