Re: More /.{I->-1} craziness
- To: mathgroup at smc.vnet.net
- Subject: [mg106300] Re: More /.{I->-1} craziness
- From: David Bailey <dave at removedbailey.co.uk>
- Date: Thu, 7 Jan 2010 02:34:34 -0500 (EST)
- References: <200912300915.EAA17299@smc.vnet.net> <hhhmn8$o9t$1@smc.vnet.net> <hhkjc4$5ag$1@smc.vnet.net> <hhpl4j$9mf$1@smc.vnet.net> <421988.1262677154744.JavaMail.root@n11> <005001ca8e15$766e7bd0$634b7370$@net> <hi1qeg$enm$1@smc.vnet.net>
Richard Fateman wrote: > I think it is interesting that the same issue came up in the design of > another computer algebra system, years ago. > That is, which objects are "atomic" and which are decomposable for > purposes of substitution. And further, > of those which are decomposable, how much cleverness should be applied > during substitution > > For example, Exp[I x] -Exp[- I x] /. Exp[I x] -> s should probably > result in s-1/s. > In Mathematica, one gets s-E^(-Ix). > > can either > (1) Make this come out s-1/s > or > (2) Argue that Mathematica already does the right thing, blame the user, > blame the documentation, blame the nature of mathematics, claim that it > is impossible to "read the user's mind" etc. > > To me, the question is simply, by what programming technique can we make > Mathematica do the truly expected thing. Notice that using the transformation rule Exp[I x] -> s (or f[x]->s in general) in the way you require, involves inverting it to produce x->g[s] for some g. In general g may not be unique, which is why the following code generates a warning, but essentially does what you want to do: Solve[Eliminate[{ans == Exp[I x] - Exp[-I x], Exp[I x] == s}, {x}], ans] Reduce (rather than Eliminate) yields a more mathematically precise answer, but the result is considerably more clumsy. Note also that ReplaceAll *can* be used to do mathematical operations without complications provided the LHS of each rule is a variable (but not a constant such as I, Pi, etc). David Bailey http://www.dbaileyconsultancy.co.uk