Mathematica: Modular arithmetic with nonnumber
- To: mathgroup at smc.vnet.net
- Subject: [mg35144] Mathematica: Modular arithmetic with nonnumber
- From: "Geoff Tims" <Geoff at swt.edu>
- Date: Tue, 25 Jun 2002 19:56:07 -0400 (EDT)
- Organization: Southwest Texas State University
- Sender: owner-wri-mathgroup at wolfram.com
I have a function which takes in and gives out numbers such as 3e[2] + 3e[4] In other words, these are integer multiples of basis vectors. Now, I want to be able to take any arbitrary vector mod p, for some prime p. The problem is that if I do Mod[11e[6],7] Mathematica sees 11e[6] as a noninteger and thus doesn't do modular arithmetic on it. Is there some way to do this? One thought I had was to have some function which strips 11e[6] down to 11 and then does modular arithmetic. That would be good enough for me because I'm trying to figure out if all values are 0 or if they are not. If I end up with a 4 instead of 4e[6], I still know it isn't 0. However, I don't know how to do that and if there's a faster way, that would be useful in my program as it might do lots of calculations. Any help would be wonderful Thanks Geoff Tims