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In mathematics, change of base can mean any of several things: Changing numeral bases, such as converting from base 2 to base 10 . This is known as base conversion. The logarithmic change-of-base formula, one of the logarithmic identities used frequently in algebra and calculus.
To state the change of base logarithm formula formally: , +,,, +, = () This identity is useful to evaluate logarithms on calculators. For instance, most calculators have buttons for ln and for log 10 , but not all calculators have buttons for the logarithm of an arbitrary base.
The logarithm keys (LOG for base 10 and LN for base e) on a TI-83 Plus graphing calculator Logarithms are easy to compute in some cases, such as log 10 (1000) = 3 . In general, logarithms can be calculated using power series or the arithmetic–geometric mean , or be retrieved from a precalculated logarithm table that provides a fixed precision.
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 .
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 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]
An easy way to calculate log 2 n on calculators that do not have a log 2 function is to use the natural logarithm (ln) or the common logarithm (log or log 10) functions, which are found on most scientific calculators. To change the logarithm base to 2 from e, 10, or any other base b, one can use the formulae: [50] [53]
The notation convention chosen here (with W 0 and W −1) follows the canonical reference on the Lambert W function by Corless, Gonnet, Hare, Jeffrey and Knuth. [3]The name "product logarithm" can be understood as follows: since the inverse function of f(w) = e w is termed the logarithm, it makes sense to call the inverse "function" of the product we w the "product logarithm".