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How to square a number in python

Written by:

Javier Leyva Seiglie

The most straight forward way to square a number in Python would be to use the built-in pow (power) method. It will receive two parameters, the number to square and the amount of times to power that number.

1square = pow(6, 2) 2print(square) 3#Output-> 36

There are many ways or reasons to square a number in python: Using function power(), math.pow() and others, here is a more details explanation:

Creating the square function ourselves:

The first method we are presenting is exactly creating a function that will return the squared number of whatever number it receives: if it receives x we will return x * x.

As you should already know, a squared number is the number multiplied by itself.

Let say the square of 2 would be 4 because 2*2=4. If we were to choose 5, we would receive 25 and so on.

Keeping that in mind, we can create our function:

1def square(num): 2 return num*num 3 4print(square(3)) 5#Output-> 9

Using the power(square) operator:

Python comes with a built in with a power (square) operator **. The syntax is quite straight forward as all the other logic or math operators.

1def squareOperator(base): 2 return base ** 2 3 4print(squareOperator(4)) 5#Output-> 16

Using the math.pow():

The only difference between the math.pow() and pow resides in the first needs the math module imported and it always return a float number, even if the result of the operation has not a floating point or decimals (if you want to learn more about Float numbers, check What is a float in Python).

1import math 2 3def squareMathPow(base, power): 4 return math.pow(base, power) 5 6print(squareMathPow(5,2)) 7#Output-> 25

Using the Numpy np.power() function:

We can also use a built-in function in the numpy library. The syntax is as simple as:

1import numpy as np 2 3print(np.power(5, 2)) 4#Output-> 25

You can find more of these articles at 4Geeks. Hope you enjoyed the reading and keep on the Geek side!