Talk:Logarithm

Article Checklist for "Logarithm"

Workgroup category or categories	Mathematics Workgroup [Categories OK]
Article status	Developed article: complete or nearly so
Underlinked article?	No
Basic cleanup done?	Yes
Checklist last edited by	Fredrik Johansson 18:02, 28 April 2007 (CDT)

To learn how to fill out this checklist, please see CZ:The Article Checklist.

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Logarithm article

I just wrote this today. It may be a little too elementary. I hope others will add to it and edit it. --Catherine Woodgold 17:09, 28 April 2007 (CDT)

...and check whether my math is correct (thanks, Fredrick Johansson -- and thanks again for the graph!) --Catherine Woodgold 18:44, 28 April 2007 (CDT)

Notational variants

I added a section on the different notations that are commonly used to indicate the base. It looks a little out of place where I put it, so plese move it if you think there's a better location in the article. Greg Woodhouse 22:47, 28 April 2007 (CDT)

I see what you mean. It's not easy to find the best place for it. It could go almost anywhere, including right after the introduction, or at the end. Not between "Extension of logarithms to fractional and negative values" and "Shape of the logarithm function", though, as that would disturb the connection between those two sections. (Perhaps a sign of a well-written article would be that no two consecutive sections could have anything added between them without disturbing the flow.) Another possibility would be to combine the notational information into the introduction; yet another would be to move some of the information out of the introduction into the notational section. I've moved the notational section to be the second-last section just before the complex number section, but if someone wants to move it again, feel free. --Catherine Woodgold 08:17, 29 April 2007 (CDT)

Extension of logarithms to non-natural number exponents

Re this part: "Rules for adding and multiplying exponents were noticed, and to extend the idea to fractions and negative numbers it was assumed that the same rules would apply." This is an intuitive, non-rigourous explanation. I haven't shown that it's possible to do that in a consistent, meaningful way. I'm not sure whether I can figure out how to do it rigourously. Perhaps someone who knows how could help here. I'd like to keep the intuitively appealing explanation and either fix it up to make it rigourous, or add a rigourous explanation separately, or state that it's not rigourous and tell the reader where to find a rigourous definition/construction of logarithms in a bibliography (which I'm hoping others will eventually supply). --Catherine Woodgold 07:55, 29 April 2007 (CDT)