Jonathan Stiefel wrote: Sorry for the basic question. I am trying to do some simple spherical coordinate integration but my results are not coming out exact, or not coming out at all. I am a MathCAD newbie and have been trying to figure out what the problem is to no avail. Using MathCAD 15. I assume it is possible to get exact results and not just a very precise decimal number? And also to use variables in the integrand that are defined in the definite integral's limits and will be given values. |
Mathcad (in common with other symbolic applications) doesn't treat sinx as sine of x; it's a variable name. You either have to write sin(x) or, in Mathcad's case, use the prefix operator, which allows sin x.
Additionally, symbolic processors tend to treat floating point expressions as instructions to return a floating point result - the fp numbers are stored and handled differently (although 1.5 is 3/2, not all fp numbers can be reduced to rational form and it attempts to treat expressions consistently).
Stuart
