Subject: Re : how to handle roots of unity symbolically ?
From: Richard Fateman
Date: Sat, 24 Nov 2012 10:00:24 -0800
The description of tellrat should probably say that you should use a
minimal polynomial:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minimal_polynomial_%28field_theory%29
On 11/24/2012 8:48 AM, Robert Dodier wrote:
> On 2012-11-23, Stavros Macrakis <macrakis at alum.mit.edu> wrote:
>
>> (%i2) p: x^12-1$
>> (%i3) factor(p);
>> (%o3) (x-1)*(x+1)*(x^2+1)*(x^2-x+1)*(x^2+x+1)*(x^4-x^2+1)
>> (%i4) tellrat(last(%));
> Stavros, why did you factor p and apply tellrat to only the last factor?
> That seems to have a different effect compared to tellrat(p).
>
> Is there some unstated assumption in tellrat about p? Maybe we need to
> add something to the documentation -- ? tellrat says only that p is a
> polynomial with integer coefficients.
>
> best
>
> Robert Dodier
>
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