Manually Calculating Logs and Exponents
Date: 12/16/2001 at 04:32:55 From: Wedge Subject: Manual calulation of logs and exps Respected Sir/Madam, Can you give me a formula to calculate logarithms and exponents of base 10?
Date: 12/16/2001 at 05:40:33 From: Doctor Mitteldorf Subject: Re: Manual calulation of logs and exps (writing e^x for "e raised to the power x") There are infinite series representations for e^x and ln(x): e^x = 1 + x + x^2/2! + x^3/3! + x^4/4! + ... The exclamation points mean "factorial." 4!, or "4 factorial" is the product of integers from 1 to 4. In practice, this is a good way to calculate e^x if x is small, but if x is large, you must add up a lot of terms before you get close to e^x. There are many tricks you can use to make the practical computation easier. Here's one: e^x=10^(x*log(e)), where log(e)=0.43429... If you want to take e^x and x is a large number, first multiply x by log(e) and find the nearest integer. This gives you the power of ten. For the factor that goes in front of the power of 10, you can find e^x for a smaller number. For example, e^20=10^(20*.43429...) = 10^8.6858... = 10^9 * 10*(-.3141...) You can calculate 10^(-.3142) as e^(-.3141/.43429) = e^-(.7233...) This way, you can calculate the series for a relatively small number, and when you're done, multiply by a billion. The series for ln(x) is ln(1+x) = x - x^2/2 + x^3/3 - x^4/4 + ... It can be used the same way: calculate it for small numbers only, and use the addition property of logarithms so you don't need to calculate for large numbers. How would you calculate ln(1,000,000) using this formula on only a small number? - Doctor Mitteldorf, The Math Forum http://mathforum.org/dr.math/
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