Exponents and Logarithms

Exponential, logarithm, power, and root functions

In addition to common functions like exp and log, MATLAB^® has several other related functions to allow flexible numerical calculations. The expm1 and log1p functions compensate for numerical round-off errors in small arguments, while the reallog, realpow, and realsqrt functions restrict the range of these functions to real numbers. nthroot calculates roots of any order, while the specialized functions pow2 and nextpow2 calculate powers of two.

Functions

`exp`	Exponential
`expm1`	Compute `exp(X)-1` accurately for small `X`
`log`	Natural logarithm
`log10`	Common logarithm (base 10)
`log1p`	Compute natural logarithm of `1+X` accurately for small `X`
`log2`	Base 2 logarithm and floating-point number dissection
`nextpow2`	Exponent of next higher power of 2
`nthroot`	Real nth root of real numbers
`pow2`	Base 2 exponentiation and scaling of floating-point numbers
`reallog`	Natural logarithm for nonnegative real arrays
`realpow`	Array power for real-only output
`realsqrt`	Square root for nonnegative real arrays
`sqrt`	Square root

Topics

Powers and Exponentials
This topic shows how to compute matrix powers and exponentials using a variety of methods.
Graphical Comparison of Exponential Functions
This example shows an interesting graphical approach for discovering whether e^pi is greater than pi^e.