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log base 2 in sagemath

asked 2018-11-29 18:08:40 +0100

panther gravatar image

How to compute log base 2 in sagemath? I tried log(1000,2). It answers log(1000)/log(2). I want an exact numerical answer.

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answered 2018-11-29 18:54:54 +0100

Emmanuel Charpentier gravatar image

What's wrong with :

sage: log(1000,2).n()
9.96578428466209

Note that this isn't an exact answer (the exact answer is log(1000)/log(2)). But it's a reasonable numerical approximation of a quantity whose "exact" numerical expression would be infinite...

Further discussion deserves reading part III of this excellent book as a prerequisite...

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Nice! I wasn't aware of that book.

dazedANDconfused gravatar imagedazedANDconfused ( 2018-11-29 19:09:16 +0100 )edit
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answered 2018-11-29 18:52:50 +0100

dazedANDconfused gravatar image

updated 2018-11-29 18:56:04 +0100

You've done it correctly and SAGE gives you the exact answer. If you try log(8,2) you'll get 3 because that's the exact answer and no logs are required. To force a numerical answer try, for example log(1000,2).n(digits=9) to get an approximate answer of 9.96578429. You can check if that's close by typing 2^9.96578429 to get 1000.00000369996. Want a closer answer? Change to digits=12 and repeat. Same thing with other functions such as sqrt(2).n(digits=4)

Alternatively, the documentation gives n(log(1000,2)) which gives you the approximation 9.96578428466209 with less key strokes. You can find the log function documentation here

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Asked: 2018-11-29 18:08:40 +0100

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Last updated: Nov 29 '18