Maxima 5.17.1 regressions for Sage



Hello Robert,

I have committed the changes to get the expected pure real or imaginary results
and added some tests to rtest_gamma.mac. The changes are done for float and
bigfloat precision.

Remark:

When %iargs is true the trigonometric functions simplify like

sin(%i) -> %i*sinh(1) or
cos(%i) -> cosh(1)

In principle something similiar for the Error functions can be done:

erf(%i)  -> %i*erfi(1)
erfi(%i) -> %i*erf(1)

I have not implemented this simplifications. Perhaps this simplifications get
more useful if we have more code in sinint or specint which uses the Error
functions more intense.

Dieter Kaiser

-----Urspr?ngliche Nachricht-----
Von: robert.dodier at gmail.com [mailto:robert.dodier at gmail.com] 
Gesendet: Dienstag, 23. Dezember 2008 07:10
An: Dieter Kaiser
Cc: maxima at math.utexas.edu
Betreff: Re: [Maxima] Maxima 5.17.1 regressions for Sage

On 12/22/08, Dieter Kaiser <drdieterkaiser at web.de> wrote:

>  Thus, I do not think that we have errors in Maxima, but Sage get unexpected
>  results for the erf function with complex arguments.
>
>  Remark: We have small realparts in the results. This is due to the limited
>  numerical accuracy of the routine.

It seems reasonable that if the result is known to be be real for all
arguments in some set of arguments, that a computed numerical
approximation should likewise be real. Can't the numerical function
just return realpart(whatever) when the argument is known to yield
a real result?

best

Robert