On Wed, Mar 12, 2008 at 05:31:16PM -0700, Justin Harford wrote:
> Hello
>
> I am just starting in on logarithms in math and i noticed that maxima,
> if you write something like
>
> log(2)
>
> it takes it as base 10. Is there a way to change the base? And can I
> make it do e? 2.718 or \ln ?
It should be the default. Are you sure it's doing base 10, as the
manual says log uses base e. For instance if you try
log(%e);
you will get 1. If you want logs of other bases you can simply do
logb(n,b) := log(n)/log(b)$
and then do log(2,10) for log_10(2). If you are learning about logs
then you can probably see where this comes from (the proof is simple
based on the definitions).
All of this is mentioned in the manual and the help for the log
function which you can find by typing
? log
in maxima.
>
> Regards
> Justin Harford
>
Matthew Gwynne