On Wed, Aug 31, 2011 at 10:20 AM, Maarten Derickx <m.derickx.stud...@gmail.com> wrote: > There was one very concrete thing that I found out recently that would > probably have set me off if I was a matlab user trying to switch to sage. > sage: (-2.0)^(1/3) > 0.629960524947437 + 1.09112363597172*I
(1) If I remember correctly, things are this way because Paul Zimmerman was "set off" by the above returning a real root, which it used to do (the default in Maxima, by the way). He had some very good consistency reasons for preferring the complex branch by default. (2) Just out of curiosity, did you even *try* the above in Matlab!? You might be surprised to find that it returns the same thing as Sage! < M A T L A B > Copyright 1984-2006 The MathWorks, Inc. Version 7.2.0.283 (R2006a) January 27, 2006 To get started, type one of these: helpwin, helpdesk, or demo. For product information, visit www.mathworks.com. >> (-2.0)^(1/3) ans = 0.6300 + 1.0911i > > -- > To post to this group, send an email to sage-devel@googlegroups.com > To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to > sage-devel+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com > For more options, visit this group at > http://groups.google.com/group/sage-devel > URL: http://www.sagemath.org > -- William Stein Professor of Mathematics University of Washington http://wstein.org -- To post to this group, send an email to sage-devel@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to sage-devel+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/sage-devel URL: http://www.sagemath.org