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.comb[n, k]¶Return the number of ways to choose k items from n items without repetition and without order.
Evaluates to n! / [k! * [n - k]!] when k n.
Also called the binomial coefficient because it is equivalent to the coefficient of k-th term in polynomial expansion of the expression [1 + x] ** n.
Raises TypeError if either of the arguments are not integers. Raises
ValueError if either of the arguments are negative.
New in version 3.8.
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.
Deprecated since version 3.9:
Accepting floats with integral values [like 5.0] is deprecated.
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 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 > 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[*integers]¶Return the greatest common divisor of the specified integer arguments. If any of the arguments is nonzero, then the returned value is the largest positive integer that is a divisor of all arguments. If all arguments are zero, then the returned value is
0. gcd[] without arguments returns 0.
New in version 3.5.
Changed in version 3.9: Added support for an arbitrary number of arguments. Formerly, only two arguments were supported.
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.
If no errors occur,
the result will be: abs[a-b] >> 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.
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. The result is between 0 and pi.
math.asin[x]¶Return the arc sine of x, in radians. The result is between -pi/2 and pi/2.
math.atan[x]¶Return the arc tangent of x, in radians. The result is between -pi/2 and pi/2.
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.dist[p, q]¶Return the Euclidean distance between two points p and q, each given as a sequence [or iterable] of coordinates. The two points must have the same dimension.
Roughly equivalent to:
sqrt[sum[[px - qx] ** 2.0 for px, qx in zip[p, q]]]
New in version 3.8.
math.hypot[*coordinates]¶Return the Euclidean norm, sqrt[sum[x**2 for x in coordinates]]. This is the length of the vector from the origin to the point given by the coordinates.
For a two dimensional point [x, y], this is equivalent to computing the hypotenuse of a
right triangle using the Pythagorean theorem, sqrt[x*x + y*y].
Changed in version 3.8: Added support for n-dimensional points. Formerly, only the two dimensional case was supported.
Changed in version 3.10: Improved the algorithm’s accuracy so that the maximum error is under 1 ulp [unit in the last place]. More typically, the result is almost always correctly rounded to within 1/2 ulp.
math.sin[x]¶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:
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¶
A floating-point “not a number” [NaN] value. Equivalent to the output of float['nan']. Due to the requirements of the IEEE-754 standard, math.nan and float['nan'] are not considered to equal to any other numeric value, including themselves. To check whether a number is a NaN, use the isnan[] function to test for NaNs instead
of is or ==. Example:
>>> import math >>> math.nan == math.nan False >>> float['nan'] == float['nan'] False >>> math.isnan[math.nan] True >>> math.isnan[float['nan']] True
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
ModulecmathComplex number versions of many of these functions.