Anyone who looks at PostgreSQL’s list of mathematical functions will notice that there are some functions that have “scale” in their name. In particular, scale(), min_scale(), and trim_scale().

While these functions all have a similar name, they each have a different purpose. That said, they’re all related to the scale of the given number. The scale is the number of digits to the right of the decimal point in a number. For example, the number 1.95 has a scale of 2, and 1.958 has a scale of 3.

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In PostgreSQL, factorial() is a mathematical function that returns the factorial of a given integer. We pass the integer (it accepts bigint), and it returns the factorial as a numeric value.

In mathematics, the factorial is the product of all positive integers less than or equal to a given positive integer. It’s denoted by that integer and an exclamation point.

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In PostgreSQL, erfc() is a mathematical function that provides the mathematical complementary error function, without loss of precision for large inputs. It returns 1 - erf(x).

The erfc() function was introduced in PostgreSQL 16, which was released on September 14th 2023.

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In PostgreSQL, erf() is a mathematical function that provides the standard mathematical error function.

The erf() function was introduced in PostgreSQL 16, which was released on September 14th 2023.

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In PostgreSQL, gcd() is a mathematical function that returns the greatest common divisor. We pass two numbers and the function returns the largest positive number that divides both inputs with no remainder.

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In PostgreSQL, lcm() is a mathematical function that returns the least common multiple. We pass two numbers and the function returns the smallest strictly positive number that is an integral multiple of both inputs.

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In PostgreSQL, log10() is a mathematical function that returns the base 10 logarithm of its argument.

It was added in PostgreSQL 12 as a SQL-standard equivalent of the existing log() function.

There is a difference between the two functions though, because log() allows us to specify which base to use (although it defaults to base 10), whereas log10() uses base 10 only.

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In PostgreSQL, we can use the trim_scale() function to remove any trailing zeros from the end of the fractional part.

This doesn’t change the value, it merely reduces the number characters whenever there are unnecessary zeros on the end.

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In PostgreSQL, min_scale() is a mathematical function that returns the minimum scale needed to represent the supplied value precisely.

The “scale” is the number of fractional decimal digits. For example, a value of 1.9500 has a minimum scale of 2, whereas 1.957 has a minimum scale of 3.

We pass the value to the function as a numeric argument, and it returns the result as an integer.

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