Orchid XP v8 <voi### [at] devnull> wrote:
> >> And then of course, people will write "log x". Wanna take a guess which
> >> base that is? Now, sometimes it actually doesn't matter which base. And
> >> if it does, it *probably* means the natural logarithm. Probably...
> >
> > IIRC, 'log x' with no base usually means base 10, and 'ln x' is the natural log.
> > But, as you say, depends what the local conventions are.
>
> Some people use log to mean base-10. Some use it to mean an unspecified
> base. But (arguably) *most* geniune maths sources use it to mean the
> natural logarithm.

Just looked at wikipedia - it seems you can tell a person's primary field by the
base they expect log x to be in!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logarithm#Notations_of_bases_and_implicit_bases

> It's a standard convention.
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prime-counting_function

I did not know that :-)

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