Editing Common logarithm (section)

== History ==
{{Main|History of logarithms}}
Common logarithms are sometimes also called "Briggsian logarithms" after [[Henry Briggs (mathematician)|Henry Briggs]], a 17th&nbsp;century British mathematician. In 1616 and 1617, Briggs visited [[John Napier]] at [[Edinburgh]], the inventor of what are now called natural (base-''e'') logarithms, in order to suggest a change to Napier's logarithms. During these conferences, the alteration proposed by Briggs was agreed upon; and after his return from his second visit, he published the first [[chiliad]] of his logarithms.

Because base-10 logarithms were most useful for computations, engineers generally simply wrote "{{math|log(''x'')}}" when they meant {{math|log<sub>10</sub>(''x'')}}. Mathematicians, on the other hand, wrote "{{math|log(''x'')}}" when they meant {{math|log<sub>''e''</sub>(''x'')}} for the natural logarithm. Today, both notations are found. Since hand-held electronic calculators are designed by engineers rather than mathematicians, it became customary that they follow engineers' notation. So the notation, according to which one writes "{{math|ln(''x'')}}" when the natural logarithm is intended, may have been further popularized by the very invention that made the use of "common logarithms" far less common, electronic calculators.

To mitigate the ambiguity, the [[ISO 80000-2|ISO 80000 specification]] recommends that {{math|log<sub>''e''</sub>(''x'')}} should be {{math|ln(''x'')}}, while {{math|log<sub>10</sub>(''x'')}} should be written {{math|lg(''x'')}}, which unfortunately is used for the [[base-2 logarithm]] by CLRS and Sedgwick and ''[[The Chicago Manual of Style]]''.<ref name="clrs">{{citation 
| last1 = Cormen | first1 = Thomas H. | author1-link = Thomas H. Cormen
| last2 = Leiserson | first2 = Charles E. | author2-link = Charles E. Leiserson
| last3 = Rivest | first3 = Ronald L. | author3-link = Ron Rivest
| last4 = Stein | first4 = Clifford | author4-link = Clifford Stein
| title = Introduction to Algorithms
| orig-year = 1990
| year = 2001
| edition = 2nd
| publisher = MIT Press and McGraw-Hill
| isbn = 0-262-03293-7
| pages = 34, 53–54
| title-link = Introduction to Algorithms }}</ref><ref name="sw11">{{citation
 | title=Algorithms
 | first1=Robert | last1=Sedgewick | author1-link=Robert Sedgewick (computer scientist)
 | first2=Kevin Daniel | last2=Wayne
 | publisher=Addison-Wesley Professional
 | year=2011
 | isbn=978-0-321-57351-3
 | page=185
 |url = https://books.google.com/books?id=MTpsAQAAQBAJ&pg=PA185
}}.</ref><ref>{{citation
 | title=The Chicago Manual of Style
 | year=2003
 | edition=25th
 | publisher=University of Chicago Press
 | page=530
| title-link=The Chicago Manual of Style
}}</ref>  <!-- I'd like to comment here that it's very rare for anyone to ''actually'' use "lg" to mean "<math>\log_{10}</math>", but I don't know where I would even start looking for sources for that assertion. -->