Re: Bug in calculating -3^49999.0
- To: mathgroup at smc.vnet.net
- Subject: [mg66025] Re: [mg65989] Bug in calculating -3^49999.0
- From: "Erickson Paul-CPTP18" <Paul.Erickson at Motorola.com>
- Date: Thu, 27 Apr 2006 02:26:23 -0400 (EDT)
- Sender: owner-wri-mathgroup at wolfram.com
- Thread-index: AcZpHZPI/2+lV1mBR2CsZeiWRW+xbwAKOabQ
Hmmm, You appear to have two problems. Since ^ is higher precedence than -, -3^49999 is evaluated as -(3^49999) which I think is not what you want. This can easily be seen as: In[17]:= -3^ 49998 // N Out[17]= -1.2837884783228*10^23855 Which being negative clear illustrates the order of precedence. Now I assume you want to take the result of some calculation which may turn out negative to some integer power, perhaps also the result of some calculation. If the number is positive then either (number or power) or both can be real or integer with a positive (integer or real, depending) result. However, if the number is negative, then either the power must be integer or the result complex. So if the desire is that the power is calculated using real arithmetic, but you know the power function must be integer, then (-3)^Round[ 49999.] //N Should give you a good answer (the number "3" could be real and / or a function that returns real and the 49999. Could be a function that results in a real answer (assumed to be very close the actual integer value). If the number is negative and the power has a fractional part (not integer) then the result will have to be complex. Paul -----Original Message----- From: kowald at molgen.mpg.de [mailto:kowald at molgen.mpg.de] To: mathgroup at smc.vnet.net Subject: [mg66025] [mg65989] Bug in calculating -3^49999.0 Hello everybody, I'm using Mathematica 5.1 under Win2k and I found a bug when I try to compute -3^49999. I get: -3^49999 //N => -3.85 * 10^23855 okay -3^49999. => -3.85 * 10^23855 okay (-3)^49999. => -3.85 * 10^23855 + 4.56*10^23844 i wrong (-3)^49999 => -3.85 * 10^23855 okay Is this a known problem? Is there a work around ? Obviously this is part of a more complicated calculation and so I cannot simply leave out the brackets. Many thanks, Axel