Re: Legendre Polynomials
- To: mathgroup at smc.vnet.net
- Subject: [mg56082] Re: Legendre Polynomials
- From: "David W. Cantrell" <DWCantrell at sigmaxi.org>
- Date: Fri, 15 Apr 2005 04:47:16 -0400 (EDT)
- References: <d3g8kd$smh$1@smc.vnet.net> <d3ls13$sgv$1@smc.vnet.net>
- Sender: owner-wri-mathgroup at wolfram.com
kazimir04 at yahoo.co.uk (Kazimir) wrote: > > BesselJ[1.5, 0] evaluates to 0 but > > (BesselJ[xx, yyy] /. xx -> 1.5) /. yyy -> 0 evaluates to complex > > infinity > > > > I seem to encounter many of these problems with Bessel and Legendre > > functions where I get actual diffrent numerical results depending on > > How I set the parameters. > > I worked with Legendre Polynomils and also experienced the problem. If > you use > LegendreP[60, 1.] you have the correct answer 1. It's correct, yes. But it easily might not have been. It would have been safer to use either LegendreP[60, 1] or LegendreP[60, x] /. x->1 , which both give 1 precisely. > It looks like it uses > a smart algorythm. If you use LegendreP[60, x] /. x -> 1. mathematica > first finds the explicit forms of the polynomail, and only afer that > puts x->1. which means that you have to sum up tirms of odre say 10^20 > to get 1. Due ti rounding errors you may obtain a wrong answer. Indeed! In[13]:= LegendreP[60, x] /. x->1. Out[13]= -180992. et cetera In[14]:= LegendreP[60, x] /. x->1.00000000000000000000000 Out[14]= 0. but _finally_ In[15]:= LegendreP[60, x] /. x->1.000000000000000000000000 Out[15]= 1. Ah, the perils of using inexact numbers. David Cantrell