The other two arithmetic methods are **
(exponentiation) and % (modulus). So if you
want to say “five squared” in Ruby, you would write
it as 5**2. You can also use floats for your
exponent, so if you want the square root of 5, you could
write 5**0.5.
The modulus method gives you
the remainder after division by a number. So, for example, if you
divide 7 by 3, you get 2 with a remainder of 1. Let’s see it
working in a program:
puts 5**2
puts 5**0.5
puts 7/3
puts 7%3
puts 365%7
25
2.23606797749979
2
1
1
From that last line, we learn that a (nonleap) year has some
number of weeks, plus one day. So if your birthday was on a
Tuesday this year, it will be on a Wednesday next year. You can
also use floats with the modulus method. Basically, it works
the only sensible way it could…but I’ll let you play around
with that.
I have one last method to mention before we check out the random
number generator: abs. This method simply returns
the absolute value of the number:
