[Maxima] 1/0? Why the error

[Richard Hennessy]

Well, maybe it is not worth that effort.  

Rich



From: Richard Fateman 
Sent: Tuesday, April 24, 2012 8:36 PM
To: Stavros Macrakis 
Cc: Richard Hennessy ; maxima at math.utexas.edu 
Subject: Re: [Maxima] 1/0? Why the error

There is at least one proposal as to how to extend the rational numbers
(already in common lisp), to include denominators of 0; adding objects
0/0, 1/0, and -1/0.  They correspond in most respects to the floating-point
objects in the IEEE standard of NotANumber, Infinity, and negative Infinity.

As a consequence, one can look in the literature for reasonable definitions
for (say) expt, log, cosine, addition, multiplication, ... of these objects.
Unfortunately this does not always lead to consistency  (in IEEE .. as well).

Just patching one spot to leave 1/0 alone may have some momentary appeal,
but if you think about it a little, it requires a lot of work and considerable thought
to make such a feature work.

RJF

ps

www.cs.berkeley.edu/~fateman/papers/extrat.ps

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