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In mathematics, the logarithm of a number is the exponent by which another fixed value, the base, must be raised to produce that number. For example, the logarithm of 1000 to base 10 is 3, because 1000 is 10 to the 3 rd power: 1000 = 10 3 = 10 × 10 × 10.
The identities of logarithms can be used to approximate large numbers. Note that log b (a) + log b (c) = log b (ac), where a, b, and c are arbitrary constants. Suppose that one wants to approximate the 44th Mersenne prime, 2 32,582,657 −1. To get the base-10 logarithm, we would multiply 32,582,657 by log 10 (2), getting 9,808,357.09543 ...
Leonhard Euler treated a logarithm as an exponent of a certain number called the base of the logarithm. He noted that the number 2.71828, and its reciprocal, provided a point on the hyperbola xy = 1 such that an area of one square unit lies beneath the hyperbola, right of (1,1) and above the asymptote of the hyperbola. He then called the ...
The mathematical notation for using the common logarithm is log(x), [4] log 10 (x), [5] or sometimes Log(x) with a capital L; [a] on calculators, it is printed as "log", but mathematicians usually mean natural logarithm (logarithm with base e ≈ 2.71828) rather than common logarithm when writing "log".
Equally spaced values on a logarithmic scale have exponents that increment uniformly. Examples of equally spaced values are 10, 100, 1000, 10000, and 100000 (i.e., 10 1, 10 2, 10 3, 10 4, 10 5) and 2, 4, 8, 16, and 32 (i.e., 2 1, 2 2, 2 3, 2 4, 2 5). Exponential growth curves are often depicted on a logarithmic scale graph.
[contradictory] For example, the number 4 000 000 has a logarithm (in base 10) of 6.602; its order of magnitude is 6. When truncating, a number of this order of magnitude is between 10 6 and 10 7 . In a similar example, with the phrase "seven-figure income", the order of magnitude is the number of figures minus one, so it is very easily ...
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The natural logarithm of a number is its logarithm to the base of the mathematical constant e, which is an irrational and transcendental number approximately equal to 2.718 281 828 459. [1] The natural logarithm of x is generally written as ln x , log e x , or sometimes, if the base e is implicit, simply log x .