This is a really, very simple question, but I've never been an extremely confident mathematician and I just want to make sure that my attempt was correct. Oh and this is homework incase you were thinking I'm trying to sneak answers. 🙂 All logarithms are to base b . The original expression is:
$$
\log(4) – 3\log(1/3) + \log(2)
$$
So I decided, the first thing to do was to invoke the power law so they're all in the same form:
$$
\log(4) – \log(1/3^3) + \log(2) = \log(4) – \log(1/27) + \log(2)
$$
Then I used the subtraction law:
$$
\log(4 \cdot 27) + \log(2) = \log(108) + \log(2)
$$
And finally I applied the addition law:
$$
\log(108 \cdot2) = \log(216)
$$
The question was to simplify it to a single logarithm. I just wanted to ensure I had done this right. All the other answers in the paper evaluate to like $log(5)$ and 216 seemed a little out of place :).
Best Answer
Yes you've done that correctly. I like to pull the negative sign up with the exponent to turn everything into addition, but what you've done is fine:
$$\log(4) - 3\log(1/3) + \log(2) = \log(4) + \log((1/3)^{-3}) + \log(2)$$