Re: Root's third argument?
- To: mathgroup at smc.vnet.net
- Subject: [mg66237] Re: [mg66220] Root's third argument?
- From: Adam Strzebonski <adams at wolfram.com>
- Date: Fri, 5 May 2006 05:02:24 -0400 (EDT)
- References: <200605040921.FAA09564@smc.vnet.net> <65034E2F-09AA-4A3B-B58F-1DC578AC1F24@mimuw.edu.pl> <05F73634-6905-47F8-A07A-08A1EDE4D777@mimuw.edu.pl>
- Reply-to: adams at wolfram.com
- Sender: owner-wri-mathgroup at wolfram.com
Andrzej Kozlowski wrote: > > On 4 May 2006, at 21:45, Andrzej Kozlowski wrote: > >> >> On 4 May 2006, at 18:21, bradc355113 at yahoo.com wrote: >> >>> The Root function seems to have an undocumented third argument--does >>> anyone know what it represents? >>> >>> I ran into it while trying to use some replacement rules to replace >>> Root objects in an expression, and none of my "Root[f_,k_]" patterns >>> were matching, because Root has an invisible third argument that >>> doesn't show up in output. >>> >>> I have a workaround, but I'm still curious. >>> >>> Thanks, >>> Brad >>> >> >> Yes, there is indeed a third, hidden argument. I think it represents >> (or at least it used to represent) what is called "the isolating >> set" of the algebraic number, that is, a subset of the complex plane >> in which the root object is the only root of the minimal polynomial. >> This is necessary in order for the roots of the polynomial to be >> ordered, so that you can speak of the "first roots", "second root" etc. >> >> Mathematica uses two approaches to root isolation: numerical and >> exact one. Which one is used depends on the value of the option >> ExactRootIsolation of Root. One can check that the invisible third >> argument is different (you can extract it with Part). However, it >> seems to me that the actual form of the third argument was changed >> (without my noticing it until today ;-)) in some version of >> Mathematica between 3 and 5. Mathematica used to return an >> approximate value of the root with the ExactRootIsolation set to >> False and the corners of the isolating rectangle in the complex plane >> with ExactRootIsolation set to True. However, now it seems just to >> return 0 and 1, which I find impossible to interpret. I am sure, >> however, that the same information is still stored somewhere... >> >> Andrzej Kozlowski >> >> > > On second thoughts I think that the most likely explanation is this. > Originally the third argument in Root was indeed the information about > the isolating set that I described above. Then, at some point, it was > decided not to include this information any more. However, probably for > the sake of backward compatibility of code, three argument form of Root > was retained, but the third argument was changed to 0 or 1 depending on > whether ExactRootIsolation is set to False or True. This is exactly what it is. The third argument of Root indicates the root isolation method to be used to determine the ordering of roots. Specifying the root ordering is necessary to give a precise meaning to the definition of Root[f, k] as "the k-th root of f". In the root ordering chosen in Mathematica the real roots always come first, and they are ordered by the increasing values. Hence, for real roots, the root ordering is well defined without a reference to root isolation methods used, and therefore the value of the third argument of Root is irrelevant. For roots that are not real the situation is different. They always come after the real roots, and the complex conjugates are always adjacent, but the relative ordering of pairs of conjugate roots is determined by sorting the isolating sets of the roots with negative imaginary parts (using Mathematica Sort function). Hence, to make the ordering of non-real roots well defined we need to indicate which method should be used to obtain the isolating sets. In particular, it may happen that Root[f, k, 0] != Root[f, k, 1] (but only if f has less than k real roots). Best Regards, Adam Strzebonski Wolfram Research > > I am just guessing, of course, and, as always, take no responsibility > for whatever might happen to your Mathematica code if you believe me > ...;-) > > Andrzej Kozlowski > > Tokyo, Japan >
- References:
- Root's third argument?
- From: bradc355113@yahoo.com
- Root's third argument?