Formal and informal knowledge of logarithms in secondary school students

This thesis is focused on the utilization of simplified functional equations in logarithm exercise. The goal of this work is to assess the degree of formalism in the logarithm knowledge of high school students. The first part attends to the origin and development on the term logarithm and logarithmic tables. These findings are subsequently put into the context of present day logarithm teaching extracted from contemporary high school textbooks. The second part describes an experiment which was conducted for the purpose of this thesis. The final part contains the results of the thesis and the evaluation of their relevance for logarithm tuition. Keywords: logarithm, logarithm tables, textbook analysis, functional equations