Thanks for the speedy answer to my question. In Mathematica 4 I entered this
Binomial[8000, 800] // N
and got this
4.227952629795940W10^1127
Tom
Richard Fateman wrote:
> Thomas La Bone wrote:
>> I get this answer from 1000 choose 100:
>>
>> float(combination(1000,100));
>>
>> 6.3850511926305126*10^+139
>>
>> but I get an error from 8000 choose 800:
>>
>> float(combination(8000,800));
>>
>> Maxima encountered a Lisp error:
>> Error in SETQ [or a callee]: Can't print a non-number.
>> Automatically continuing.
>> To reenable the Lisp debugger set *debugger-hook* to nil.
>>
>> Mathematica gives me an answer of something like 2.819E+1040. Is the
>> error the result of Maxima not being able to represent such a large
>> floating point number?
>>
>> Tom
>>
>> _______________________________________________
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>> Maxima at math.utexas.edu
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>>
> try bfloat
> (%i6) bfloat(binomial(8000,800));
> (%o6) 4.22795262979594b1127
>
> I don't know where you got that other number from Mathematica.
>
> Indeed, the result cannot be represented within the range of
> double-precision hardware floats. Mathematica uses a software float.
> For Maxima, use bigfloats (bfloat) if you need extended range or
> precision.
>
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