On Mon, Jul 7, 2008 at 6:26 AM, Fabrizio Caruso <caruso at dm.unipi.it> wrote:
> I thought it would be go to use that instead that "fib" for different reasons
> among which the fact the Fibonacci is one of the things some people try
> the first time they use Maxima.
Well, fib seems to work just fine (unless you're referring to the
limitation to arguments < 2^31), and the unsophisticated new user will
never notice the difference in calculation time, since the vast
majority of the time is spent in calculating the *display*! The user
would have to be fairly sophisticated to think of writing
showtime:true$ thru 10 do fib(10^6)$ (reports actual calculation time)
instead of
fib(10^6); (evaluation takes << 1 sec, but there are several
seconds' delay before printing)
And as I say, there are lots of other calculations a casual user might try.
-s