Subject: How to deal with r^(bfloat(2/3))/r^(2.0/3)
From: Barton Willis
Date: Thu, 13 Dec 2007 10:48:13 -0600
maxima-bounces at math.utexas.edu wrote on 12/13/2007 09:53:57 AM:
> Stavros has the right idea to look again at what you were doing.
>
> A rule like changing numbers less than 1.0b-16 to zero is questionable.
But
> then any use of r^(float) in Maxima is unusual, so maybe nothing else
will
> break.
>
I agree that such a rule is questionable. But if you still want to do it,
a standard Maxima programming idiom will do the trick:
f(e) := if mapatom(e) then <do something> else apply(op(e), map(f,
args(e)))
I mention this because the idiom is useful, not because I think that
expunging floating point "fuzz" is a good thing to do.
Barton