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Question:
Why is ln used to express natural logarithms instead of using any other symbol?


Replies:
Irving Stringham, a professor of mathematics at the University of California, Berkeley, invented the ln notation in the early 1890's. It is not universally used, though extremely common. He also promoted lg for log base 10. This was not accepted among mathematicians. Instead, Log is often used for log base 10, and the notation log needs to specify which base is being used.

---Nathan A. Unterman


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