Re: TraditionForm Appears to be Inconsistent
- To: mathgroup at smc.vnet.net
- Subject: [mg99602] Re: TraditionForm Appears to be Inconsistent
- From: Bill Rowe <readnews at sbcglobal.net>
- Date: Sat, 9 May 2009 03:19:32 -0400 (EDT)
On 5/7/09 at 6:40 AM, uk.org.microserf at googlemail.com wrote: >The Mathematica 7 documentation says that >TraditionalForm[Exp[I \[Theta]] == Cos[\[Theta]] + I Sin[\[Theta]]] >will display the expression in traditional form, and indeed it does. >However, the following evaluates the expression and then displays >True in traditional form: >TraditionalForm[Cos[x] == Sin[x + \[Pi]/2]] >Why is TraditionalForm behaving differently in these two apparently >identical situations, and how can I get Mathematica to display this >trigonometric identity in traditional form? TraditionalForm is not behaving differently. Mathematica by default evaluates everything it can. When you do TraditionalForm[Cos[x] == Sin[x + \[Pi]/2]], Mathematica evaluates the argument to True and the result is the same as if you had done TraditionalForm[True] To get what you want you have to tell Mathematica not to evaluate the argument. Specifically, you need to use HoldForm. That is: TraditionalForm[HoldForm[Cos[x] == Sin[x + \[Pi]/2]]] will give you the display you want.