There is a large literature on how to compute
determinants of symbolic matrices. I hope you
have checked some of it for inspiration. The
numerical methods are not very good unless the
matrices are mostly numeric and dense.
What Maxima/lisp system are you using? The error
message you report suggests some program is compiled
incorrectly. Why would newdet assume that anything
was a fixnum (which is what the error message, in its
clumsy way, is trying to say, I think)?
RJF
Fabrizio Caruso wrote:
> Hi again,
>
> I just tried "newdet" and it seems it cannot handle
> big numbers:
>
> Maxima encountered a Lisp error:
>
> Type-error in KERNEL::OBJECT-NOT-TYPE-ERROR-HANDLER:
> 275693057640 is not of type (OR (MOD 536870911) CONS NULL)
>
> Automatically continuing.
> To reenable the Lisp debugger set *debugger-hook* to nil.
>
>
> ---------------------------------------------------------------
>
> I will submit my version of "Determinant" and of "Triangularize"
> together with the real algebraic geometry package.
> I hope they and the whole package
> will be included in (some) next release of Maxima.
>
> Fabrizio
>
>