Also, "ln" is distractingly hard to read because lowercase-l looks like capital-I and digit-1 and so forth and needs all the extra context it can get, and "ln" is harder to say than "log"; that agreement would be pretty much a pure loss for the pure mathematicians.
--what hogwash. "harder to say." My heart bleeds for you. First of all, lg occurs in number theory and computer science, so the idea only ln occurs in pure math is hogwash. My personal convention, which is you will note is superior to Halmos (of whose opinions, I have a low opinion), is: always use ln, except if you are trying, intentionally, to convey the idea that some formula enjoys validity REGARDLESS of the base of the logarithm, in which case use log. You also will notice this is a superior convention for the purposes of pure mathematicians. If they are too stupid to realize that, it is their problem, not mine. Second, where do these pure mathematicians get off proclaiming there should be pure math books divorced from the rest of reality? And what's wrong with striving in every way possible to make work more accessible to Joe Schmoe? Rather than striving to make it less accessible? And even the pure mathematicians, you will notice, write their numbers in base 10. (Proving their total hypocrisy.) Every time I make a log-plot, I use base-10 logs to do it, and I dunno, I guess pure mathematicians never need to plot anything because that would be too applied? And finally, re "l" looking like "1" and "|", you know what? THIS WAS A MASSIVE MISTAKE by typographers. And while in many ways I love Don Knuth, he was a total idiot when he designed his fonts making u and v look too similar, as well as this. He should have intentionally striven to make them all look different. He then introduced "\ell" in LaTeX to try to compensate for his own idiocy, but it was too little too late. But there is nothing stopping somebody from designing a font suited to mathematics, for a refreshing change. (Maybe has already happened?). Knuth's font sure wasn't it, but one could. -- Warren D. Smith http://RangeVoting.org <-- add your endorsement (by clicking "endorse" as 1st step)