Hacker Newsnew | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submitlogin

True, although the fact that all of them are pretty much equivalent does mean that there's no real reason to think of it as a logarithm with 'base' anything.

Also to the best of my knowledge there's no logarithm tables that predate Napier (1550-1617), and when you try to calculate those tables you naturally stumble upon the natural logarithm (or at least a very close approximation), as the easiest way to create a logarithm table is to start with the powers of something like 1.00000001.



Right, I am not sure why I thought that the slide rule predated logarithms.




Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: