Read about the relationship of perception to stimulus in the Wikipedia article on Fechner’s law.

Learn about the meaning of decibel and how the decibel terminology is useful in digital audio. It was discussed briefly in the article you read in the first assignment on “Digital Audio” (search for the word “decibel”). It’s also discussed in a fairly non-technical way near the end of my blog post about “Fading by means of linear interpolation” (search for the word “decibel”). For a more technical understanding, you might want to start with this explanation. Then you could proceed to this similar but perhaps slightly more technical explanation. If you want the TMI version including historical information, etc., you can read the Wikipedia article.

If you’re uncertain about the mathematics of exponents and logarithms, you can research them on the web. Perhaps the most painless introduction is to watch videos on the Khan academy about exponential and logarithmic functions and about logarithm basics (“understanding logarithms as inverse exponentials).

Think about how the logarithmic nature of our perceptions is relevant to the relationship of musical pitch to frequency, and the relationship of tempo to time interval. Here’s a Max example that lets you experience the difference between linear and exponential control of amplitude.