Expressions with exploding factors



On Thu, 5 Aug 2010, Bastiaan Bergman wrote:

> I want to numerically evaluate an expression obtained by Maxima (or any
> other CAS for that matter). Doing that I frequently hit on an expression
> that cannot be evaluated because it involves parts with extremely big
> numbers. What is the general approach to solve such problem? Is there a
> branch of science working on such problems, how is that called (what do I
> Google)?

Depending exactly what you want, useful search terms might be

asymptotics
limits
numerical hygiene

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HTH,

Dan