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math — Mathematical functions

This module provides access to the mathematical functions defined by the C standard.

These functions cannot be used with complex numbers; use the functions of the same name
from the cmath module if you require support for complex numbers. The distinction between
functions which support complex numbers and those which don’t is made since most users do
not want to learn quite as much mathematics as required to understand complex numbers.
Receiving an exception instead of a complex result allows earlier detection of the unexpected
complex number used as a parameter, so that the programmer can determine how and why it
was generated in the first place.

The following functions are provided by this module. Except when explicitly noted otherwise, all
return values are floats.

Number-theoretic and representation functions

math. ceil(x)
Return the ceiling of x, the smallest integer greater than or equal to x. If x is not a float,
delegates to x.__ceil__() , which should return an Integral value.

math. copysign(x, y)
Return a float with the magnitude (absolute value) of x but the sign of y. On platforms that
support signed zeros, copysign(1.0, -0.0) returns -1.0.

math. fabs(x)
Return the absolute value of x.

math. factorial(x)
Return x factorial as an integer. Raises ValueError if x is not integral or is negative.

math. floor(x)
Return the floor of x, the largest integer less than or equal to x. If x is not a float, delegates to
x.__floor__() , which should return an Integral value.

math. fmod(x, y)
Return fmod(x, y) , as defined by the platform C library. Note that the Python expression x
% y may not return the same result. The intent of the C standard is that fmod(x, y) be
exactly (mathematically; to infinite precision) equal to x - n*y for some integer n such that
the result has the same sign as x and magnitude less than abs(y) . Python’s x % y returns a
result with the sign of y instead, and may not be exactly computable for float arguments. For
example, fmod(-1e-100, 1e100) is -1e-100 , but the result of Python’s -1e-100 % 1e100 is
1e100-1e-100 , which cannot be represented exactly as a float, and rounds to the surprising
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1e100 . For this reason, function fmod() is generally preferred when working with floats,
while Python’s x % y is preferred when working with integers.

math. frexp(x)
Return the mantissa and exponent of x as the pair (m, e) . m is a float and e is an integer
such that x == m * 2**e exactly. If x is zero, returns (0.0, 0) , otherwise 0.5 <= abs(m)
< 1 . This is used to “pick apart” the internal representation of a float in a portable way.

math. fsum(iterable)
Return an accurate floating point sum of values in the iterable. Avoids loss of precision by
tracking multiple intermediate partial sums:

>>> sum([.1, .1, .1, .1, .1, .1, .1, .1, .1, .1]) >>>
0.9999999999999999
>>> fsum([.1, .1, .1, .1, .1, .1, .1, .1, .1, .1])
1.0

The algorithm’s accuracy depends on IEEE-754 arithmetic guarantees and the typical case
where the rounding mode is half-even. On some non-Windows builds, the underlying C
library uses extended precision addition and may occasionally double-round an intermediate
sum causing it to be off in its least significant bit.

For further discussion and two alternative approaches, see the ASPN cookbook recipes for
accurate floating point summation.

math. gcd(a, b)
Return the greatest common divisor of the integers a and b. If either a or b is nonzero, then
the value of gcd(a, b) is the largest positive integer that divides both a and b. gcd(0, 0)
returns 0 .

New in version 3.5.

math. isclose(a, b, *, rel_tol=1e-09, abs_tol=0.0)

Return True if the values a and b are close to each other and False otherwise.

Whether or not two values are considered close is determined according to given absolute
and relative tolerances.

rel_tol is the relative tolerance – it is the maximum allowed difference between a and b,
relative to the larger absolute value of a or b. For example, to set a tolerance of 5%, pass
rel_tol=0.05 . The default tolerance is 1e-09 , which assures that the two values are the
same within about 9 decimal digits. rel_tol must be greater than zero.

abs_tol is the minimum absolute tolerance – useful for comparisons near zero. abs_tol must
be at least zero.

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If no errors occur, the result will be: abs(a-b) <= max(rel_tol * max(abs(a), abs(b)),
abs_tol) .

The IEEE 754 special values of NaN , inf , and -inf will be handled according to IEEE rules.
Specifically, NaN is not considered close to any other value, including NaN . inf and -inf are
only considered close to themselves.

New in version 3.5.

See also: PEP 485 – A function for testing approximate equality

math. isfinite(x)
Return True if x is neither an infinity nor a NaN, and False otherwise. (Note that 0.0 is
considered finite.)

New in version 3.2.

math. isinf(x)
Return True if x is a positive or negative infinity, and False otherwise.

math. isnan(x)
Return True if x is a NaN (not a number), and False otherwise.

math. ldexp(x, i)
Return x * (2**i) . This is essentially the inverse of function frexp() .

math. modf(x)
Return the fractional and integer parts of x. Both results carry the sign of x and are floats.

math. remainder(x, y)
Return the IEEE 754-style remainder of x with respect to y. For finite x and finite nonzero y,
this is the difference x - n*y , where n is the closest integer to the exact value of the
quotient x / y . If x / y is exactly halfway between two consecutive integers, the nearest
even integer is used for n . The remainder r = remainder(x, y) thus always satisfies
abs(r) <= 0.5 * abs(y) .

Special cases follow IEEE 754: in particular, remainder(x, math.inf) is x for any finite x,
and remainder(x, 0) and remainder(math.inf, x) raise ValueError for any non-NaN x.
If the result of the remainder operation is zero, that zero will have the same sign as x.

On platforms using IEEE 754 binary floating-point, the result of this operation is always
exactly representable: no rounding error is introduced.

New in version 3.7.

math. trunc(x)
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Return the Real value x truncated to an Integral (usually an integer). Delegates to

x.__trunc__() .

Note that frexp() and modf() have a different call/return pattern than their C equivalents: they
take a single argument and return a pair of values, rather than returning their second return value
through an ‘output parameter’ (there is no such thing in Python).

For the ceil() , floor() , and modf() functions, note that all floating-point numbers of
sufficiently large magnitude are exact integers. Python floats typically carry no more than 53 bits
of precision (the same as the platform C double type), in which case any float x with abs(x) >=
2**52 necessarily has no fractional bits.

Power and logarithmic functions

math. exp(x)
Return e raised to the power x, where e = 2.718281… is the base of natural logarithms. This
is usually more accurate than math.e ** x or pow(math.e, x) .

math. expm1(x)
Return e raised to the power x, minus 1. Here e is the base of natural logarithms. For small
floats x, the subtraction in exp(x) - 1 can result in a significant loss of precision; the
expm1() function provides a way to compute this quantity to full precision:

>>> from math import exp, expm1 >>>

>>> exp(1e-5) - 1 # gives result accurate to 11 places
1.0000050000069649e-05
>>> expm1(1e-5) # result accurate to full precision
1.0000050000166668e-05

New in version 3.2.

math. log(x[, base])

With one argument, return the natural logarithm of x (to base e).

With two arguments, return the logarithm of x to the given base, calculated as
log(x)/log(base) .

math. log1p(x)
Return the natural logarithm of 1+x (base e). The result is calculated in a way which is
accurate for x near zero.

math. log2(x)
Return the base-2 logarithm of x. This is usually more accurate than log(x, 2) .

New in version 3.3.

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See also: int.bit_length() returns the number of bits necessary to represent an

integer in binary, excluding the sign and leading zeros.

math. log10(x)
Return the base-10 logarithm of x. This is usually more accurate than log(x, 10) .

math. pow(x, y)
Return x raised to the power y . Exceptional cases follow Annex ‘F’ of the C99 standard as
far as possible. In particular, pow(1.0, x) and pow(x, 0.0) always return 1.0 , even when
x is a zero or a NaN. If both x and y are finite, x is negative, and y is not an integer then
pow(x, y) is undefined, and raises ValueError .

Unlike the built-in ** operator, math.pow() converts both its arguments to type float . Use
** or the built-in pow() function for computing exact integer powers.

math. sqrt(x)
Return the square root of x.

Trigonometric functions
math. acos(x)
Return the arc cosine of x, in radians.

math. asin(x)
Return the arc sine of x, in radians.

math. atan(x)
Return the arc tangent of x, in radians.

math. atan2(y, x)
Return atan(y / x) , in radians. The result is between -pi and pi . The vector in the plane
from the origin to point (x, y) makes this angle with the positive X axis. The point of
atan2() is that the signs of both inputs are known to it, so it can compute the correct
quadrant for the angle. For example, atan(1) and atan2(1, 1) are both pi/4 , but
atan2(-1, -1) is -3*pi/4 .

math. cos(x)
Return the cosine of x radians.

math. hypot(x, y)
Return the Euclidean norm, sqrt(x*x + y*y) . This is the length of the vector from the origin
to point (x, y) .

math. sin(x)
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Return the sine of x radians.

math. tan(x)
Return the tangent of x radians.

Angular conversion
math. degrees(x)
Convert angle x from radians to degrees.

math. radians(x)
Convert angle x from degrees to radians.

Hyperbolic functions
Hyperbolic functions are analogs of trigonometric functions that are based on hyperbolas instead
of circles.

math. acosh(x)
Return the inverse hyperbolic cosine of x.

math. asinh(x)
Return the inverse hyperbolic sine of x.

math. atanh(x)
Return the inverse hyperbolic tangent of x.

math. cosh(x)
Return the hyperbolic cosine of x.

math. sinh(x)
Return the hyperbolic sine of x.

math. tanh(x)
Return the hyperbolic tangent of x.

Special functions
math. erf(x)
Return the error function at x.

The erf() function can be used to compute traditional statistical functions such as the
cumulative standard normal distribution:

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def phi(x):
'Cumulative distribution function for the standard normal distribution'
return (1.0 + erf(x / sqrt(2.0))) / 2.0

New in version 3.2.

math. erfc(x)
Return the complementary error function at x. The complementary error function is defined
as 1.0 - erf(x) . It is used for large values of x where a subtraction from one would cause
a loss of significance.

New in version 3.2.

math. gamma(x)
Return the Gamma function at x.

New in version 3.2.

math. lgamma(x)
Return the natural logarithm of the absolute value of the Gamma function at x.

New in version 3.2.

Constants
math. pi
The mathematical constant π = 3.141592…, to available precision.

math. e
The mathematical constant e = 2.718281…, to available precision.

math. tau
The mathematical constant τ = 6.283185…, to available precision. Tau is a circle constant
equal to 2π, the ratio of a circle’s circumference to its radius. To learn more about Tau, check
out Vi Hart’s video Pi is (still) Wrong, and start celebrating Tau day by eating twice as much
pie!

New in version 3.6.

math. inf
A floating-point positive infinity. (For negative infinity, use -math.inf .) Equivalent to the
output of float('inf') .

New in version 3.5.

math. nan
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A floating-point “not a number” (NaN) value. Equivalent to the output of float('nan') .

New in version 3.5.

CPython implementation detail: The math module consists mostly of thin wrappers around the
platform C math library functions. Behavior in exceptional cases follows Annex F of the C99
standard where appropriate. The current implementation will raise ValueError for invalid
operations like sqrt(-1.0) or log(0.0) (where C99 Annex F recommends signaling invalid
operation or divide-by-zero), and OverflowError for results that overflow (for example,
exp(1000.0) ). A NaN will not be returned from any of the functions above unless one or more of
the input arguments was a NaN; in that case, most functions will return a NaN, but (again
following C99 Annex F) there are some exceptions to this rule, for example pow(float('nan'),
0.0) or hypot(float('nan'), float('inf')) .
Note that Python makes no effort to distinguish signaling NaNs from quiet NaNs, and behavior for
signaling NaNs remains unspecified. Typical behavior is to treat all NaNs as though they were
quiet.

See also:

Module cmath
Complex number versions of many of these functions.

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