Thursday, 30 October 2014

sequences and series - Easy rational approximations of base-2 logarithms

I often find myself in need of a quick approximation to a base-2 logarithm of an integer, e.g. log23 or log25. While I can always reach for a calculator (or computer), I'd quite like to be able to derive one quickly using pen and paper, whenever I need it.




Ideally, such an approximation would be in the form of a sequence of rational numbers that approaches the target value, and which is easy to calculate by hand. Does anyone know of such a sequence?



To give an idea of what I mean: if I ever find myself needing to approximate the Golden ratio, I can simply write down the Fibonacci sequence, pick two consecutive terms and take the ratio between them. This gives successively better rational approximations to ϕ and I can easily calculate it even without a pen, since it requires only addition. While I imagine there isn't quite such an easy way to approximate log23 (or log25 or log2n), I'm looking for something as close to that as possible.



(If such a thing exists only for natural logarithms it would still be helpful, but base 2 is greatly preferred.)

No comments:

Post a Comment

real analysis - How to find limhrightarrow0fracsin(ha)h

How to find limh0sin(ha)h without lhopital rule? I know when I use lhopital I easy get $$ \lim_{h\rightarrow 0}...