On 6/7/10 6:48 PM, Dieter Kaiser wrote:
> Am Montag, den 07.06.2010, 17:57 -0400 schrieb Raymond Toy:
>
>> Currently maxima says bfloat(sqrt(%i)) is 1b0*(-1)^(1/4). That doesn't
>> seem very nice. I was expecting something along the lines of
>> bfloat(rectform(sqrt(%i))) -> .707b0 + %i*.707b0.
>>
> That is the case for float too:
>
> (%i6) float(sqrt(%i));
> (%o6) 1.0*(-1)^(1/4)
>
> This is because Maxima simplifies:
>
> (%i7) sqrt(%i);
> (%o7) (-1)^(1/4)
>
Is there any reason why this shouldn't simplify to 1/sqrt(2)+%i/sqrt(2)?
[snip examples]
> When we go into the details we will see two problems:
>
> Maxima does not follow the convention to evaluate numerically the power
> function if one of the arguments is a float or bigfloat value.
>
Should we leave it this way? I think the examples you give have weird
answers, but perhaps my expectations on what maxima should do is wrong.
Ray