Ruby Math Functions and Methods
From Techotopia
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The Ruby Math module provides the Ruby programmer with an extensive range of methods for performing mathematical tasks. In addition, the Math module includes two commonly used mathematical constants.
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[edit] Ruby Math Constants
The Ruby Math module includes common math constants. A list of constants may be accessed using the constants method:
Math.constants => ["E", "PI"]
As we can see, as of the current version of Ruby, only two constants are defined. We can access these using :: notation:
Math::PI => 3.14159265358979 Math::E => 2.71828182845905
[edit] Ruby Math Methods
As mentioned previously, Ruby provides an extensive range of math related methods. These are listed and described in the following table.
| Method name | Description |
|---|---|
| Math.acos, Math.acos! | Arc cosine |
| Math.acosh, Math.acosh! | Hyperbolic arc cosine |
| Math.asin, Math.asin! | Arc sine |
| Math.asinh, Math.asinh | Hyperbolic arc sine |
| Math.atan, Math.atan!, Math.atan2, Math.atan2! | Arc tangent. atan takes an x argument. atan2 takes x and y arguments |
| Math.atanh, Math.atanh! | Hyperbolic arc tangent |
| Math.cos, Math.cos! | Cosine |
| Math.cosh, Math.cosh | Hyperbolic cosine |
| Math.sin, Math.sin! | Sine |
| Math.erf | Error function |
| Match.erfc | Complementary error function |
| Math.exp, Math.exp! | Base x of Euler |
| Math.frexp | Normalized fraction and exponent |
| Math.hypot | Hypotenuse |
| Math.ldexp | Floating-point value corresponding to mantissa and exponent |
| Math.sinh, Math.sinh! | Hyperbolic sine |
| Math.sqrt, Math.sqrt! | Square root |
| Math.tan, Math.tan! | Tangent |
| Math.tanh, Math.tanh! | Hyperbolic tangent |
[edit] Some Examples
Now that we have a list of the math methods available to us, we can start to use them:
To perform a square root:
Math.sqrt(9) => 3.0
Or a Euler calculation:
Math.exp(2) => 7.38905609893065
[edit] Summary
This chapter has covered the concepts behind Ruby methods and functions. The next chapter will focus on Ruby logical operators.
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| Previous | Table of Contents | Next |
| Ruby Operator Precedence | Understanding Ruby Logical Operators |
