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Logarithms can be used to make calculations easier. For example, two numbers can be multiplied just by using a logarithm table and adding. These are often known as logarithmic properties, which are documented in the table below. [2] The first three operations below assume that x = b c and/or y = b d, so that log b (x) = c and log b (y) = d.
The logarithm of a product is the sum of the logarithms of the numbers being multiplied; the logarithm of the ratio of two numbers is the difference of the logarithms. The logarithm of the p -th power of a number is p times the logarithm of the number itself; the logarithm of a p -th root is the logarithm of the number divided by p .
An important property of base-10 logarithms, which makes them so useful in calculations, is that the logarithm of numbers greater than 1 that differ by a factor of a power of 10 all have the same fractional part. The fractional part is known as the mantissa. [b] Thus, log tables need only show the fractional part. Tables of common logarithms ...
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.
Such complex logarithm functions are analogous to the real logarithm function: >, which is the inverse of the real exponential function and hence satisfies e ln x = x for all positive real numbers x. Complex logarithm functions can be constructed by explicit formulas involving real-valued functions, by integration of 1 / z {\displaystyle 1/z ...
For example, log 10 10000 = 4, and log 10 0.001 = −3. These are instances of the discrete logarithm problem. Other base-10 logarithms in the real numbers are not instances of the discrete logarithm problem, because they involve non-integer exponents. For example, the equation log 10 53 = 1.724276… means that 10 1.724276… = 53.
The exponential of a matrix A is defined by =!. Given a matrix B, another matrix A is said to be a matrix logarithm of B if e A = B.. Because the exponential function is not bijective for complex numbers (e.g. = =), numbers can have multiple complex logarithms, and as a consequence of this, some matrices may have more than one logarithm, as explained below.
The binary logarithm is the logarithm to the base 2 and is the inverse function of the power of two function. As well as log 2, an alternative notation for the binary logarithm is lb (the notation preferred by ISO 80000-2).