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25-Diamond I
March 31, 2018
Question

Bug in symbolics

  • March 31, 2018
  • 3 replies
  • 2586 views

We all know that the symbolic engine in Mathcad (mupad) is not state of the art and often is not capable to solve or simplify expression where other software succeeds.

But this wrong result "1" is surprising nonetheless.

Can anybody provide an explanation (other than it being a bug)?

Bild.png

3 replies

24-Ruby IV
March 31, 2018

I see one bug in Mathcad, Maple and Mathematica!

I have sent reports about it to companies. But no answer!

May be my article, where I have it described it will receive the answer

See Figs 1 and 2 here Nautilus  

Werner_E25-Diamond IAuthor
25-Diamond I
March 31, 2018

Every software has its bugs as nobody and nothing is perfect.

Noentheless I consider this bug as a liitle bit special as the calcultion in question is rather simple and straightforward and the wrong result is surprising.

According to reporting the bug. The way I see PTC now is such, that i won't bother reporting anything to them - I don't think it will have any effect whatsoever other than me wasting time.

21-Topaz II
March 31, 2018

Please, do not take it into account my answer. How can I cancel the answer? As it is, (using "Edit replay") I can only add and I can not cancel.das bier.jpgdas bier.jpg

Werner_E25-Diamond IAuthor
25-Diamond I
April 1, 2018

While playing around with those expression I also noticed that "assume,x=real" for some reasons unknown to me will force the symbolics to return a correct simplified result.

Its funny that "assume, x<0" also has the same effect, but x<=0, x>0 or x>=0 not!

Furthermore you'll notice the different ways sqrt(3x) is "simplified"

 Bild.png

Nevertheless  a blatant error like the result 1 given never should occur - thats a severe bug.

 

Concerning your inability to delete pictures you already had embedded.

PTC has changed some look and feels in the forum software (you may have noticed the new menu in the upper left) and as its usual with PTC they made things even worse as the already used to be.

At least on laptops the height of the new popup when embedding pictures or videos is so large, that you can't access "Insert" button. Sometimes you may have success in moving this popup up with your mouse, sometimes you even have to use your browser zoom to be able to insert a video or pic. It ridiculous and a sign of severe incompetence (but we already knew that, right?).

Concerning deletion of pictures already embedded in a post, the only way i found to do it (other than unsafe and doubtfully trying to delete whitespace at the position where the picture should be) is to switch from "Rich Text" mode to HTLM mode and edit/delete the HTML code. What can we say - its PTC!

24-Ruby IV
April 1, 2018

Я всегда говорю своим студентам:

Три основных инструмента математических программ (графика, численная и символьная математика) может использовать каждый дурак. Но только умный студент умеет проверять правильность их работы!