Issue with imaginary numbers

#1 Posted: 3/14/2009 9:03:14 PM

0 likes in 12 posts.

Group: User

Hi
Thank you for an excellent piece of software. Definitely the best Windows Mobile calculator I have found.
However I think I have found a slight issue with imaginary numbers

(-1)^(1/2) should give the answer as i
However it seems to add a small real number to the answer, giving

(-1)^(1/2) = 6.123*10^{-17} + i

Additionally, squaring i gives

 i^2 = -1 + 1.2246*10^{-16}*i

which should be -1

2*i^2=-4+4.8984*10^{-16}*i

should be -4, etc.

Regards

#2 Posted: 3/15/2009 10:23:52 PM

Andrey Ivashov

2270 likes in 3734 posts.

Group: Super Administrator

This is not an issue. This is normal calculation errors of numeric methods. Please, take a look to the picture below:

This hapens because Mathcad, by default, shows all numbers, that less than 10^(-15) as 0. But SMath Studio doesn't do so - that's why you can see proper results in the similar examples... and that's why your finding is not an issue...

#3 Posted: 3/15/2009 11:03:46 PM

jas0nuk

0 likes in 12 posts.

Group: User

So, it's a by-product of calculating imaginary numbers numerically.

Thanks for the explanation.

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Issue with imaginary numbers - Messages