A method for computing a natural logarithm function includes partitioning a mantissa region between 1 and 2 into N equally spaced sub-regions; precomputing a reference point a_i of each of the N equally spaced sub-regions, where i=0, . . . ,N-1; selecting N sufficiently large so that, within each sub-region, a first degree polynomial in m computes log(m) to within a preselected degree of accuracy for any m within the sub-region, where m is a mantissa of a binary floating point representation of a variable x; and computing a value of log(x) for a binary floating point representation of x stored in a memory of a computing device utilizing the first degree polynomial in m.