On 5/14/10, pbowyer at olynet.com <pbowyer at olynet.com> wrote:
> As you can see from the output, I have an extra term involving p[0] for the
> FD[i](3,0) function outputs that does not show up if I manually do the
> calculation. Am I doing something incorrectly, or is there a problem
> with Maxima?
Yes, it's a bug. Here is a simpler example:
'sum(0^i, i, 0, n);
=> 0
Depending on what you think is the value of 0^0, that should either
trigger an error (since Maxima by default believes 0^0 is undefined)
or 1 (pretty much everyone else in the world).
In the above example, Maxima has assumed that 0^i => 0 without
looking at the possible values of i. Here is an even simpler example.
0^i;
=> 0
assume (i >= 0);
0^i;
=> 0
I claim neither of these should simplify to 0;
anyone who believes 0^0 = 1 (and this does seem to be quite
a lot of people) should agree.
By the way, you're more likely to get people to look at your
problem if you say "Here is X and here is Y, I thought they
should be the same but they're not" as opposed to "Here are
10 different things, two of which are not equal."
FWIW
Robert Dodier