I am using a propriatery software package that can do math, but it's functions are limited. TIA
2006-09-19 06:32:59 · 4 answers · asked by RDHamm 4 in Science & Mathematics ➔ Mathematics
You could carry out a Taylor series expansion around "e", since ln(e)= 1. You need calculus to derive the Taylor expansion for your initial algorithm, but it is all numbers after that.
See http://mathworld.wolfram.com/TaylorSeries.html for how Taylor series expansions work, and they even have an expansion for ln(x) in the examples!
2006-09-19 06:45:22 · answer #1 · answered by Mr. Quark 5 · 0⤊ 0⤋
Not possible to my knowledge. The difficulty is as follows. To get a natural logarithm you to have have 10 raised to the power of some number to equal your number.This is not possible with normal operations you suggest,
2006-09-19 06:44:51 · answer #2 · answered by openpsychy 6 · 0⤊ 0⤋
I don't remember the exact algorithm, but you can
find one in Volume 1, Chapter 1 of Knuth's book,
the art of computer programming. Look in the
section on logarithms.
Re: Avinash K's series: It only converges for
|x| <1 and for x =1 it converges to ln 2 very
slowly. It won't work for larger values of x.
2006-09-19 06:41:07 · answer #3 · answered by steiner1745 7 · 0⤊ 1⤋
ln(1+x)=x-(x^2)/2+(x^3)/3- and so on.using this formula,we can find the logarithms(at natural log) of any number greater than zero.For numbers less than zero,logarithms are not defined.
2006-09-19 06:41:21 · answer #4 · answered by avinash k 1 · 0⤊ 0⤋