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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 other formulas involving the natural logarithm, leads to the term "natural".
The better the initial approximation y is, the closer A is to 1, so its logarithm can be calculated efficiently. A can be calculated using the exponential series, which converges quickly provided y is not too large. Calculating the logarithm of larger z can be reduced to smaller values of z by writing z = a · 10 b, so that ln(z) = ln(a) + b ...
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 ...
This can be envisioned as shifting the decimal separator of the given number to the left yielding a positive, and to the right yielding a negative exponent of 10. Only the logarithms of these normalized numbers (approximated by a certain number of digits), which are called mantissas, need to be tabulated in lists to a similar precision (a ...
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.
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.
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A base-10 log scale is used for the Y-axis of the bottom left graph, and the Y-axis ranges from 0.1 to 1000. The top right graph uses a log-10 scale for just the X-axis, and the bottom right graph uses a log-10 scale for both the X axis and the Y-axis. Presentation of data on a logarithmic scale can be helpful when the data: