Question

What does In mean? d/dxIn(12x+4) = ?

Answer 1

I always get confused at what " In " means in an equation. Integral? Indefinite? :0

Answer 2

it means "natural log"...you can just press the ln button on a calculator

Answer 3

Lol my calculator ran out of battery so I have resulted to using wolfram but it doesn't seem to understand when I input "In" in the equation.

Answer 4

Are you sure it is an uppercase i or have you considered a lowercase L? (They look similar)

Answer 5

As in Ln, or Log / log base e.

Answer 6

its a lowercase L

Answer 7

Oh, I have never thought of it as Ln. I think thats why it wouldnt compute in wolfram. So it's "Ln" then?

Answer 8

Alright, thanks!

Answer 9

i wrote capital L to distinguish it from how it looks, but yes. That is called natural logarithm. Of course, by the fun of life lowercase L and uppercase i get to be strikingly similar to confuse. (and don't get me started on that vertical bar thing too, or 1)

Answer 10

Absolute value irks you out?

Answer 11

mainly when I see it written out on paper, some people are just clumsy about it so you sometimes just can never tell! :p

Answer 12

ln is just the natural logarithm

Answer 13

You don't need a calculator for this lol.

d/dx of any ln expression is (expression)' * 1/(expression). So in your case it's (12x+4)' * 1/(12x+4) = 12/(12x+4).

Answer 14

So would it be safe to put it as d/dx (log(12x+4) = 3/(3x+1) ?

Answer 15

No, log(x) is different.
It's just that the derivative of ln(x) plays out nice.