William wrote: > Until a month ago (-1)^(1/3) would have given -1. This is the default > behavior dictated by Maxima. Then Paul Zimmerman complained > (with a great argument) that this was stupid, and Mike Hansen changed > the default Maxima behavior to what we currently have. He did > this by setting a variable when the symbolic arithmetic class starts maxima. > > http://trac.sagemath.org/sage_trac/ticket/1425 > > If you saw Paul Zimmerman's talk at Sage Days 6, you get the very > strong impression that he's right about anything like this.
Hmmm, on the worksheet I posted the plot for this equation shows the graph crossing the x axis around -1.5 but solve indicates this value is 0.721124785153704 + 1.24902476648341*I. So why is solve placing parentheses around the 3rd root it returns if it evaluates into an imaginary value? [...,..,x == (-1)^(1/3)*3^(1/3)] I ran into this issue while demonstrating the usefulness of the solve function in front of a class of students. That was quite 'fun' :-) Ted --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ To post to this group, send email to sage-support@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/sage-support URLs: http://www.sagemath.org -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---