any way to force symbolic computation?
- To: mathgroup at smc.vnet.net
- Subject: [mg78370] any way to force symbolic computation?
- From: Nathan Thern <nthern at yahoo.com>
- Date: Fri, 29 Jun 2007 05:48:14 -0400 (EDT)
Hello all-
I have a set of programs that perform various operations on rational
numbers and have started running into overflow errors.
By definition, rationals have the form (P1^E1 P2^E2 ...)/(P3^E3 P4^E4)
for primes P1,P2... and exponents E1,E2...
Although the final result of my computations is never very large, the
exponents created by some of my functions are quite large, particularly
in the numerator.
For example, one of my cases created the temporary result
5^653552968908668614293009096/2. Eventually the function should return
33, which is Floor[653552968908668614293009096/128^12], but it overflows
first.
I find myself forced to re-write my functions to work with rationals in
the form output by FactorInteger (e.g. 5^653552968908668614293009096/2
-> {{5,653552968908668614293009096},{2,-1}}), unless there is a way to
treat these rationals symbolically. Any clues?
regards,
Nate T