One thing you will find you need to do in any programming language is do math. Here are some useful math functions for the Objective C language. I give a little bit of a comparison to Visual Basic for those who know that language. They are provided in no special order:

• fabs() – Gets the absolute value of the value in parentheses. Works like ABS() function in Visual Basic. fabs(-123) = 123, fabs(34) = 34.
• ceil() – Find the ceiling integer. Kind of like rounding up. Same as INT(x+1) in Visual Basic.  ceil(3.1) = 4.
• floor() – Find the floor integer. Kind of like rounding down. Same as INT(x) in Visual Basic. floor(3.6) = 3.
• exp() – Find the exponential value.
• pow() – Raise a number to the power. pow(3,6) = 3^6 in Visual Basic.
• rand() – Generate a pseudo random number. Function is RND(x) in Visual Basic. A good discussion on random numbers in Objective C can be found here.
• srandom() – Generate a seed for the random number generator. This is done with the Randomize statement in Visual Basic.
• sqrt() – Find out the square root of a number. sqrt(x) = x^(1/2) in Visual Basic.