Re: Re: Why is the negative root?
- To: mathgroup at smc.vnet.net
- Subject: [mg69688] Re: [mg69656] Re: Why is the negative root?
- From: Andrzej Kozlowski <akoz at mimuw.edu.pl>
- Date: Thu, 21 Sep 2006 07:29:04 -0400 (EDT)
On 20 Sep 2006, at 15:43, Paul Abbott wrote: > > >> Paul and Andrej and previously Daniel Lichtbau all defend the Root >> objects without >> telling the whole story. > > Really? What has been omitted? > >> In my opinion those objects are just pseudo-useful. > > Why do you think that? > Well, actually there is, I think, something "that has been omitted". Root objects are not "tautological", "pseudo-useful" objects that some imagine them to be, but each in a certain sense "embodies" some pretty quite sophisticated computations. The key word is "root isolation". The early versions of Mathematica actually used to store the isolating informaiton as the third argument to Root, but now the third argument is either 1 or 0 corresponding to whether exact or approximate method or root isolation is used, and the relevant information is stored in some other way. It is because the roots have been isolated that they can be ordered and manipulated in various ways, that is impossible in the case of radical expressions. So there is some truth to the claim that we have not "told the whole story" but why should we? It can be found in any decent book on Computer Algebra (e.g. Chee Keng Yap, "Fundamental Problems in Algorithmic Algebra", Princeton University Press, Chapter 6 gives all the basic necessary facts. You can also look at the standard AddOn package "Algebra`RootIsolation`" to see what's involved). Articles about the Mathematica implementation of Root objects have appeared more than once in The Mathematica Journal. Obviously, this list is not the right place for lessons on modern computer algebra. Also, concerning "pseudo-usefulness": things like root objects are by no means unique to Mathematica but in fact implemented in every serious computer algebra system available today (including of course Mathematica's main competitors in the CAS area). It's curious that all these guys decided to waste so many man-hours studying, researching and implementing this useless stuff, not to mention writing numerous articles and books about it. Andrzej Kozlowski TOkyo, Japan