We haven't been told to get a special calculator =[ We were just told a $1 calculator will do until second semester. We are still in first semester and I am not even sure we are going to be taught this stuff any time soon. Teacher just said we are going to look at chapter 3 simple and compound interest next. Then today I had a spare 2 and a half hours so I went through and did all of the self testing exercises to get a head start. Then this problem had me boggled and I just couldn't move on with my life without solving it lol

Well ok, Im just saying that instead of randomly until you converge on the true value, you could use the solver function in excel, which basically checks values a lot faster than you are able to

gj on the extra work put in tho!

This post was edited by Simens on Sep 19 2013 12:09pm

I need to look into that, just had a quick look and I can't find the solver function in my excel, it's data tab and analysis group right? I don't have an analysis group for some reason Weird will look into it more on the weekend.

Thanks Gotta try and do my best, I don't want to fall behind or anything

This is not the kind of question where you should be using a solver or guess and check (even though you can reach the solution in this way). When problems get more complicated than a simple compound interest question, this will not be practical. If you're doing anything finance related, you should understand logs. In fact, anyone that's taken algebra 2 in high school should understand logs. There isn't anything inherently difficult to understand about logs. Just spend an hour reading some material and it should click (rather than spend several hours finding alternative methods...)

What kind of accounting class is this? First year of high-school intro to accounting?

I graduated year 12 highschool, but then worked for 3-4 years and just started studying again.

TAFE is what the place is called it is basically a college but cheaper and you can't get a degree there, however your courses count towards a degree (EDIT: it saves you money, I think the teacher said it was 1year of roughly 10 units at tafe for $1200 total or you can do the same units at university and it costs about $1000 per unit)if you wanted to further your education at a proper college. I am studying Cert IV in accounting and plan to get my diploma + advanced diploma and then get a qualification from one of the professional accounting bodies, then do book keeping or payroll for a year and move on to accounting and maybe eventually become a tax agent.

There is a large age gap in the students ranging from 17-50's. They need to teach all of the stuff people have forgotten, as you know the only maths people use outside of school is basic adding, subtracting, division, multiplication etc. So things like simple interest, compound interest, algebra etc needs to be taught again. They want us to be able to show working out to prove we understand it, then later on we can use a calculator (second semester is when we need a financial calculator). We are also learning manual book keeping so that we can understand what MYOB is doing in the background, needless to say we study MYOB as well.

I admit so far it has been pretty easy, this was the only thing that has actually stumped me and we probably weren't even going to look at it till next semester, just I wanted to get ahead. I would be so happy if it gets more complicated like you say it will, I like to be challenged and like tonight once I figured it out I felt pretty happy with myself lol.

This post was edited by JukeBOXX on Sep 19 2013 01:43pm

We would say this as "log base 10 of 1000", or "the log of 1000". When the base is not given (and you have nothing else to go one) assume the base is 10. But as others have pointed out, it can be confusing so it is best to always include the base when you write it.


We would say this as "log base e of 1000", or "the natural log of 1000". e is just a constant, about 2.72 (but like pi you can keep adding digits if you need more accuracy), it is a very useful number so that is why "log base e" has its own notation/abbreviation of "ln".

Hope this helps with some of the confusion over notation.

This post was edited by Azrad on Sep 19 2013 03:32pm