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Re: Numerical accuracy of Hypergeometric2F1

  • To: mathgroup at smc.vnet.net
  • Subject: [mg55857] Re: Numerical accuracy of Hypergeometric2F1
  • From: Paul Abbott <paul at physics.uwa.edu.au>
  • Date: Fri, 8 Apr 2005 01:36:29 -0400 (EDT)
  • Organization: The University of Western Australia
  • References: <d3043c$nei$1@smc.vnet.net>
  • Sender: owner-wri-mathgroup at wolfram.com

In article <d3043c$nei$1 at smc.vnet.net>,
 "Christos Argyropoulos M.D." <chrisarg at fuse.net> wrote:

> Thanx everyone for pointing out the subtleties of making Mathematica 
> understand precision of input (I always thought that SetPrecision threads 
> over its first input). 

Why?

> However I still think that the asymptotic expansion 
> (or whatever numerical method is used internally) used to obtain the 
> numerical value of Hypergeometric2F1 for large (floating point, arbitrary 
> precision) values of one of the parameters needs to be re-examined by WRI.
> I am attaching an example where the parameters to hypergeometric2F1 were 
> arbitrary precision numbers (using SetPrecision before passing them to the 
> function).

In that example you set

 k=90.;

This is a machine-precision number. Using it in artihmetic with other 
expressions will coerce them to machine-precision also. For example, try

 k Pi

or

 2 k

or 

 2.7`30 k

and you will get back a machine-precision number -- so your example does 
not quite work the way you think that it does.

> When rational numbers or integers are used to represent input, Mathematica 
> gets it right (I believe that in those cases it symbolically expands the 
> hypergeometric in a polynomial and then evaluates the polynomial).
> For the example attached  (i.e. Hypergeometric2F1[80+1/2,1,3/2,90/10]) 

You mean Hypergeometric2F1[90+1/2,1,3/2,90/10]. If you enter 

  Hypergeometric2F1[90+1/2,1,3/2,x]

you will see that Mathematica indeed expands the hypergeometric into a 
polynomial.

> and floating point representations for [90+1/2, 90/10] one has to increase 
> precision to 25 digits to get an accurate result (and relying on machine 
> arithmetic is off the mark). By comparison, Forrey's implementation of the 
> Hypergeometric2F1 ( R. C. Forrey, Computing the Hypergeometric Function, 
> Journal of Computational Physics 137, 79-100 (1997). ) which uses machine 
> floating point arithmetic gives the following answer (also obtainable by 
> Mathematica for integer/rational input) :
> 
> 0.9860651611217461E+89

Actually, Mathematica gives

  N[Hypergeometric2F1[90 + 1/2, 1, 3/2, 9/10]]//InputForm
  9.860651611217265*^88

and computation to higher precision confirms that all digits except the 
last are correct -- so Forrey's result is also correct to only 13 
digits. 

> Using a smaller first argument (i.e. 10) results in no "significant" 
> difference in the answers provided by Mathematica irrespective of the 
> encoding of the parameters (rational, machine arithmetic floating point, 
> arbitrary precision numbers). My interpretation of these results is that the 
> algorithm that provides the numerical answer needs some 
> tweaking/optimization

The linear transformation used for 1/2 < x <= 1 is

  Hypergeometric2F1[k + 1/2, 1, 3/2, x] /. 
  Hypergeometric2F1[a_, b_, c_, z_] :>     
    (Gamma[c] Gamma[c - a - b])/(Gamma[c - a] Gamma[c -b]) *
      Hypergeometric2F1[a, b, a + b - c + 1, 1 - z] +      
    (Gamma[c] Gamma[a + b - c])/(Gamma[a] Gamma[b]) *
      Hypergeometric2F1[c - a, c - b, c - a - b + 1, 1 - z]/
        (1 - z)^(a + b - c) // FullSimplify

and, for large k, using only the term

  largek = (Sqrt[Pi] Gamma[k])/((1 - x)^k 2 Sqrt[x] Gamma[k + 1/2])

with machine precision values also gives 13 correct digits

  largek /. {x -> 0.9, k -> 90.} // InputForm

  9.860651611217077*^88

(the second term is insignificant for these parameter values).

Cheers,
Paul

-- 
Paul Abbott                                   Phone: +61 8 6488 2734
School of Physics, M013                         Fax: +61 8 6488 1014
The University of Western Australia      (CRICOS Provider No 00126G)         
35 Stirling Highway
Crawley WA 6009                      mailto:paul at physics.uwa.edu.au 
AUSTRALIA                            http://physics.uwa.edu.au/~paul


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