Using R for Numerical Analysis in Science and Engineering

Chapter 2 Calculating

2.1 Basic operators and functions

R can be used, without any programming, as a powerful calculator. It has all the standard arithmetic operators and functions, which operate on numeric or complex vectors (including scalars, which are vectors of length 1).

• Arithmetic operators: The binary arithmetic operators are +, -, *, /, ^ (exponentiation), %% (mod), and %/% (integer division).

• Logarithms and exponentials: log (natural log), log10, (base 10 log), log2 (base 2 log), log (x,b) (log of x to base b). log1p(x) computes log(1+x) accurately for |x| << 1.

• exp computes the exponential function, and expm1 computes exp(x)-1 accurately for |x| << 1.

• Trigonometric functions : cos(x), sin(x), tan(x), acos(x), asin(x), atan(x), ...