Here's an interesting footnote from the wikipedia article on logarithms: Some mathematicians disapprove of this notation. In his 1985 autobiography, Paul Halmos criticized what he considered the "childish ln notation," which he said no mathematician had ever used.[13] The notation was invented by Irving Stringham, a mathematician.[14][15] Sent from my iPhone
On Mar 1, 2015, at 01:27, Warren D Smith <warren.wds@gmail.com> wrote:
I happen to think ln(x) is a damn fine idea, and log(x) without defining it but nevertheless secretly agreeing it is ln(x), is just obnoxious insistence on some sort of "you know what it means if you are part of the 'in' crowd" status symbol psychological bullshit. You know, where groups like to create pointless initiation rites, like hazing fraternity brothers and creating secret handshakes. Because otherwise they sadly wouldn't be able to feel like Real Men.
There is nothing wrong with being less ambiguous and saving a letter at the same time. What's wrong is doing the opposite.
And further, I like Knuth's (?) idea of lg(x)=log(x)/log(2) as well.
And nobody ever seems to do it, but if anybody wanted to have a special one for log(x)/log(10), such as lt(x), I would have been ok with that too.
_______________________________________________ math-fun mailing list math-fun@mailman.xmission.com https://mailman.xmission.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/math-fun