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The natural logarithm of e itself, ln e, is 1, because e 1 = e, while the natural logarithm of 1 is 0, since e 0 = 1. The natural logarithm can be defined for any positive real number a as the area under the curve y = 1/x from 1 to a [4] (with the area being negative when 0 < a < 1). The simplicity of this definition, which is matched in many ...
Logarithms can also be negative: = since = =. log 10 150 is approximately 2.176, which lies between 2 and 3, just as 150 lies between 10 2 = 100 and 10 3 = 1000. For any base b, log b b = 1 and log b 1 = 0, since b 1 = b and b 0 = 1, respectively.
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 ...
On the region consisting of complex numbers that are not negative real numbers or 0, the function is the analytic continuation of the natural logarithm. The values on the negative real line can be obtained as limits of values at nearby complex numbers with positive imaginary parts.
The logarithm function is not defined for zero, so log probabilities can only represent non-zero probabilities. Since the logarithm of a number in ( 0 , 1 ) {\displaystyle (0,1)} interval is negative, often the negative log probabilities are used.
The logarithm keys (log for base-10 and ln for base-e) on a typical scientific calculator. The advent of hand-held calculators largely eliminated the use of common logarithms as an aid to computation. The numerical value for logarithm to the base 10 can be calculated with the following identities: [5]
Including 0, the set has a semiring structure (0 being the additive identity), known as the probability semiring; taking logarithms (with a choice of base giving a logarithmic unit) gives an isomorphism with the log semiring (with 0 corresponding to ), and its units (the finite numbers, excluding ) correspond to the positive real numbers.
A similar LNS named "signed logarithmic number system" (SLNS) was described in 1975 by Earl Swartzlander and Aristides Alexopoulos; rather than use two's complement notation for the logarithms, they offset them (scale the numbers being represented) to avoid negative logs. [3]