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Global Definition operator questions

mzeftel
1-Newbie

Global Definition operator questions

Hi,

I'm specifying the behavior of the global definition operator for Mathcad Prime 3.0, and have a few questions. First of all, how do you use the global definition operator in Mathcad 15? We know people like to set it up next to a plot or other results, to see what happens when you change its value. How else is the global definition useful.

We'd like to clean up some of the current behavior. In Mathcad 15, you can have this situation:

This behavior seems very confusing, especially if the values and definitions are spread throughout a worksheet.

We are defining the global definition for Prime 3.0, so that a variable can only be defined globally once in a worksheet. If a variable is defined globally, you will get an error if you try to redefine it locally. Likewise if you globally define x ~3 and x~4, you will get errors on both definitions, until you remove one of them.

Let me know if this change will cause problems for any converted worksheets.

Thanks,

Mona

31 REPLIES 31

Steen Groðe wrote:


...: Okay, the user has not determined a n, I let n be temporarily 10, and let me define element at Origin to 0 (in some cases both this and as well the netxt and the next depending on how many is needed according to the recursive definition and accept defintionen calculating until n equals 10 (or the first 10 calculated elements), instead of thinking that I do not know n so I must flag with an error.

I think this would be quite dangerous. A naive (careless?) user who should have set a non-zero initial value, but didn't actually do so, might well think he's got the right answer from his recursion if he gets a result with no indication that anything was wrong. There is sometimes merit in getting an error message!

Alan

Let the system raise a yellow flag in that case. Or a green one like we have so far, despite the yellow will probably more appropriate.

And when I am at it... let Mathcad/Prime treat units more intelligent. 3 bananas + 2 bananas + 2 apples is actually (as the symbolic machine will answer) 5 bananas + 2 apples not an error like the numerical part of Mathcad/Prime believes.

This can even be extended to 2 bananas + 1 banana = 3 bananas but this will be much more difficult to implement, so in my Danish version I just decided that any unit is in plural (the probablity for this is 1).

Basicly I think what I am trying to say it two things (at least): First of all Prime has to be user friendly and users lives dangerous lifes. You can die from life (probability is once again 1).

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