How to square a number in python

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

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