Dear Members: Happy New Year 2011. I am wondering about whats the difference between natural log (ln) and log to the base 10 (log) while calculating the Shannon diversity index.
H = - summation [i=1 to s] (pi log pi) for i = 1...n. Where, i = proportion of the population of group i (i.e. relative abundance), and s = the total number of groups. What if I use natural log (ln) in the above formula? Is one method better than the other? In my understanding log is generally taken to shrink the large numbers. Because in the above formula the proportion can range from 0 to 1 (which is already a small number, and standardized too), I am wondering about the logic of multiplying the proportion by its logarithmic proportion. I would greatly appreciate your thoughts. Sincerely, Nabin
