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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 mod‐
ule if you require support for complex numbers. The distinction between functions which support complex num‐
bers 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 and evaluates to zero when k > n .

Also called the binomial coefficient because it is equivalent to the coefficient of k-th term in polynomial ex‐
pansion of (1 + x)ⁿ .

Raises TypeError if either of the arguments are not integers. Raises ValueError if either of the arguments
are negative.

Added 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 ze‐
ros, copysign(1.0, -0.0) returns -1.0.

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

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

Changed in version 3.10: Floats with integral values (like 5.0 ) are no longer accepted.

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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.fma(x, y, z)
Fused multiply-add operation. Return (x * y) + z , computed as though with infinite precision and range
followed by a single round to the float format. This operation often provides better accuracy than the direct
expression (x * y) + z .

This function follows the specification of the fusedMultiplyAdd operation described in the IEEE 754 standard.
The standard leaves one case implementation-defined, namely the result of fma(0, inf, nan) and
fma(inf, 0, nan) . In these cases, math.fma returns a NaN, and does not raise any exception.

Added in version 3.13.

math.fmod(x, y)
Return fmod(x, y) , as defined by the platform C library. Note that the Python expression x % y may not re‐
turn 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 pre‐
ferred 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 in‐
ternal 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.

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 .

Added in version 3.5.

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Changed in version 3.9: Added support for an arbitrary number of arguments. Formerly, only two argu‐
ments 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) <= 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.

Added 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.)

Added 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.isqrt(n)
Return the integer square root of the nonnegative integer n. This is the floor of the exact square root of n, or
equivalently the greatest integer a such that a² ≤ n.

For some applications, it may be more convenient to have the least integer a such that n ≤ a², or in other
words the ceiling of the exact square root of n. For positive n, this can be computed using a = 1 + isqrt(n
- 1) .

Added in version 3.8.

math.lcm(*integers)

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Return the least common multiple of the specified integer arguments. If all arguments are nonzero, then the
returned value is the smallest positive integer that is a multiple of all arguments. If any of the arguments is
zero, then the returned value is 0 . lcm() without arguments returns 1 .

Added in version 3.9.

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.nextafter(x, y, steps=1)
Return the floating-point value steps steps after x towards y.

If x is equal to y, return y, unless steps is zero.

Examples:

math.nextafter(x, math.inf) goes up: towards positive infinity.

math.nextafter(x, -math.inf) goes down: towards minus infinity.
math.nextafter(x, 0.0) goes towards zero.
math.nextafter(x, math.copysign(math.inf, x)) goes away from zero.

See also math.ulp() .

Added in version 3.9.

Changed in version 3.12: Added the steps argument.

math.perm(n, k=None)
Return the number of ways to choose k items from n items without repetition and with order.

Evaluates to n! / (n - k)! when k <= n and evaluates to zero when k > n .

If k is not specified or is None , then k defaults to n and the function returns n! .

Raises TypeError if either of the arguments are not integers. Raises ValueError if either of the arguments
are negative.

Added in version 3.8.

math.prod(iterable, *, start=1)
Calculate the product of all the elements in the input iterable. The default start value for the product is 1 .

When the iterable is empty, return the start value. This function is intended specifically for use with numeric
values and may reject non-numeric types.

Added in version 3.8.

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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 differ‐
ence x - n*y , where n is the closest integer to the exact value of the quotient x / y . If x / y is exactly half‐
way 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 opera‐
tion 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.

Added in version 3.7.

math.sumprod(p, q)
Return the sum of products of values from two iterables p and q.

Raises ValueError if the inputs do not have the same length.

Roughly equivalent to:

sum(itertools.starmap(operator.mul, zip(p, q, strict=True)))

For float and mixed int/float inputs, the intermediate products and sums are computed with extended
precision.

Added in version 3.12.

math.trunc(x)
Return x with the fractional part removed, leaving the integer part. This rounds toward 0: trunc() is equiva‐
lent to floor() for positive x, and equivalent to ceil() for negative x. If x is not a float, delegates to
x.__trunc__ , which should return an Integral value.

math.ulp(x)
Return the value of the least significant bit of the float x:

If x is a NaN (not a number), return x.

If x is negative, return ulp(-x) .
If x is a positive infinity, return x.
If x is equal to zero, return the smallest positive denormalized representable float (smaller than the mini‐
mum positive normalized float, sys.float_info.min ).
If x is equal to the largest positive representable float, return the value of the least significant bit of x, such
that the first float smaller than x is x - ulp(x) .
Otherwise (x is a positive finite number), return the value of the least significant bit of x, such that the first
float bigger than x is x + ulp(x) .

ULP stands for “Unit in the Last Place”.

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See also math.nextafter() and sys.float_info.epsilon .

Added in version 3.9.

Note that frexp() and modf() have a different call/return pattern than their C equivalents: they take a single ar‐
gument 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 magni‐
tude 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.cbrt(x)
Return the cube root of x.

Added in version 3.11.

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

math.exp2(x)
Return 2 raised to the power x.

Added in version 3.11.

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 sub‐
traction 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

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

Added in version 3.3.

See also: int.bit_length() returns the number of bits necessary to represent an integer in binary, ex‐
cluding 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 the IEEE 754 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.

Changed in version 3.11: The special cases pow(0.0, -inf) and pow(-0.0, -inf) were changed to re‐
turn inf instead of raising ValueError , for consistency with IEEE 754.

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 coordi‐
nates. The two points must have the same dimension.

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Roughly equivalent to:

sqrt(sum((px - qx) ** 2.0 for px, qx in zip(p, q)))

Added 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.

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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

Added 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.

Added in version 3.2.

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

Added in version 3.2.

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

Added 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!

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Added in version 3.6.

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

Added in version 3.5.

math.nan
A floating-point “not a number” (NaN) value. Equivalent to the output of float('nan') . Due to the require‐
ments of the IEEE-754 standard, math.nan and float('nan') are not considered to equal to any other nu‐
meric 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

Added in version 3.5.

Changed in version 3.11: It is now always available.

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 ex‐
ample, 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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