# Simplifying expressions including logarithms - which is simplest?

I have been out of maths for around 10 years and I'm just getting back into it with a degree on the Open University. I have a question about simplifying expressions - and which representation is considered to be the most simple.

This might be completely subjective and context driven - but I'd like to know if there are any rules about this which I may have forgotten.

Say I am trying to simplify the expression:

$$\ln4 - 4\ln2$$

I know that this simplifies to $$\ln4 - 2\ln4$$

which again simplifies to

$$-\ln4$$

I can think of three ways of representing this, and I'm not sure which is best:

$$-\ln4$$

$$\ln\frac{1}{4}$$

$$\ln(4^{-1})$$

Is there a standard?

(Please forgive my terrible LaTeX skills, I'm just starting out!)

I would write $-\ln 4$ simply because it is typographically simplest -- it needs neither superscripts nor fractions -- and not obviously harder to understand than the others.
(But I would at least consider whether $-2\ln 2$ would be a more useful representation for the context).