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The natural logarithm can be expanded into a series, yielding \(\ln(1+x) = \sum_{k=1}^{\infty} \frac{(-1)^{k+1}x^k}{k}\).

Factorials apply only to nonnegative integers but can be extended to complex numbers with positive real parts using the Gamma function, \(\Gamma(n) = \int_0^\infty e^{-x}x^{n-1}dx\).

Shannon's entropy, \(H(X) = -\sum_{x \in \mathbf{X}} p(x) \log p(x)\), measures how informative the mass function \(p\) is about the occurrence of the possible values of variable \(X\).