Re: Question
- To: mathgroup at smc.vnet.net
- Subject: [mg9411] Re: [mg9390] Question
- From: seanross at worldnet.att.net
- Date: Wed, 5 Nov 1997 01:56:29 -0500
- Sender: owner-wri-mathgroup at wolfram.com
Boguslaw Ptaszynski wrote: > > Hello Mathematica (v.3,0 for Windows) Users, > I have a question that I hope someone has an answer for. I have the > following recurrence relation: > > a[n+2]= 1/(b^2) ( b/2 a[n] + n (n-1)/4 a[n-2] ) > > for the indices in the series n>=2. > I want to use the formula to determine the values of a[n] for > n=2,3,4,...12 and give these values in the table > > I have written : > > Clear [a,n,b] > a[n_] := a[n]= 1/(b^2) ( b/2 a[n-2] + (n-2) (n-3)/4 a[n-4] ); a[0]=a0; > a[1]=a1; > TableForm[ Table[{n, a[n]}, {n,0,12}]] > > an I have got the following message: > > $RecursionLimit::"reclim": "Recursion depth of \!\(256\) exceeded." > $RecursionLimit::"reclim": "Recursion depth of \!\(256\) exceeded." > $RecursionLimit::"reclim": "Recursion depth of \!\(256\) exceeded." > General::"stop": > "Further output of \!\($RecursionLimit :: \"reclim\"\) will be > suppressed \ > during this calculation." > > What does the message mean? I will be happy to get any information > abaout this problem. > > Boguslaw Ptaszynski a[n] requires that a[n-2] and a[n-4] be specified. Since you have only declared initial values for a[0] and a[1], I can't think of a single n for which a[n] would be defined. a[0] requires a[-2] and a[-4]. a[1] requires a[-1] and a[-3]. a[2] requires a[0](have that) and a[-2]. a[3] requires a[1] and a[-1]. a[4] requires a[2] and a[0](have that) all other values of n>4 will require one of the preceding a[n]'s to be defined and none of them are. I think you need to specify four values of a[n] to define your function, 2 a[n]'s for even values of n and 2 for the odd ones.