Sums, products, and logarithms
In this section, we introduce notation for doing the most basic operations we can do with numbers, namely adding them together or multiplying them together. We’ll then introduce notation for working with logarithms.
Sums and the 𝚺 notation
When we want to add several numbers together, we can use the summation, or 
, notation. For example, if we want to represent the addition of the numbers 
, we use the 
notation to write this as follows:
Eq. 13
This notation is shorthand for writing 
. This essentially defines what the 
notation represents – that is, the following:
Eq. 14
In the left-hand side (LHS) of Eq. 14, the integer indexing variable, 
, takes the values between 1 (indicated beneath the symbol) and 5 (indicated above the symbol) and we interpret the LHS as “take all the numbers 
for the values of 
indicated by the symbol and add them together.”
You may wonder whether the shorthand...
