yacas Re: [seul-edu] [no longer OT] summation of 1/2x

[rnd@sampo.karelia.ru]

On Wed, 5 Apr 2000, Ray Olszewski wrote:

>With (1/2)^n, the number of significant (decimal or binary) digits in the
>fraction increases by 1 with every step in n -- here too, you'll run into
>rounding problems very fast. Here too, depending on how a language handles
>rounding and underflow, the series may or may not asymptotically approach 1
>or 2 (depending on if n starts as 1 or 0). 
>
>So ... does anyone know if ANY of the languages we've collectively suggested
>handles these problems well? I do know that perl has BigInt and BigFloat
>packages that are said to handle arbitrarily-large precision. I've actually
>used BigInt, and (except for speed) it works fine with 100+ digit integers.
>I haven't used BigFloat.

Take a look at yacas:

Name        : yacas                        Relocations: (not relocateable)
Version     : 1.0.28                            Vendor: (none)
Release     : 1                             Build Date: Sat Feb 12 15:35:06 2000Install date: Sat Feb 12 16:07:24 2000      Build Host: rsuzi.pgu.karelia.ru
Group       : Applications/Math             Source RPM: yacas-1.0.28-1.src.rpm
Size        : 822431                           License: LGPL
URL         : http://www.xs4all.nl/~apinkus/yacas.html
Summary     : Yet Another Computer Algebra System
Description :
Yacas (Yet Another Computer Algebra System) is a small and highly flexible
computer algebra language. The syntax uses a infix-operator grammar
parser. The distribution contains a small library of mathematical
functions, but its real strength is in the language in which you can
easily write your own symbolic manipulation algorithms. It supports
arbitrary precision arithmetic.



Sincerely yours, Roman Suzi
--
Russia * Karelia * Petrozavodsk * rnd@rsuzi.pgu.karelia.ru
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