Antilog is a "horse and buggy" word for "power of 10". :)
antilog(3) = 1000 = 103
I'm old enough to remember before electronic calculators
were invented. We spoke of antilogs a lot because we used
logarithm tables (base 10) to do common multiplication and
division problems. Since logarithms convert multiplication
to addition, division to subtraction and exponentiation to
multiplication, we would do a problem like this
26.7 x 8.43
by looking up the log of 26.7 in a table as 1.42651 and the
log of 8.43 as 0.92583, add these together, getting 2.35234,
Then we'd use the table in reverse to look up the antilog of
2.35234 which is 225.08, but that was faster than doing this:
2 6.7
x 8.4 3
8 0 1
1 0 6 8 0
1 1 3 6 0 0
1 2 5.0 8 1
We called using the table in reverse "finding the antilog".
We had to settle for 125.08 instead of 125.081, but that wasn't
much loss. If we used a slide rule we'd have to settle for 125.
Just appreciate the electronic calculators we have today.
Since we used the table in reverse to get the final answer,
we called powers of 10 "antilogs". We rarely hear that word
used anymore. We now just say "power of 10".
So the antilog of a number is just 10 raised to the power of
that number.
Edwin
