On Sep 17, 1:23 pm, sps <[email protected]> wrote: > I'm a mathematician, not a traslator of uncomprensible characters!! Many non-mathematicians would argue that the latter implies the former :-)
Computer algebra packages such a maxima have to work a little to squeeze mathematical notation on a single line and they require the user to meet them somewhere halfway. If you read the documentation of Maxima [http://maxima.sourceforge.net/docs/manual/en/maxima_16.html], you can find that the notation %f[p,q]([a1,...,ap],[b1,...,bq],z) stands for the generalized hypergeometric function (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generalized_hypergeometric_series) p_F_q ( a1,...,ap ; b1,...,bq; z ) and that %i stands for the complex number i=sqrt(-1) [because I'm typing this into a plain text message board, I have to make notational compromises as well] Although to the casual observer, maxima's output might look like line noise, the dedicated reader will find that maxima's notation is actually quite close to the standard mathematical notation. You can argue that the "%" convention for "standard symbols" is possibly ill- conceived, but having "f" (or even "F") and "i" reserved for the hypergeometric function and sqrt(-1) respectively would have been inconvenient, since those symbols are popular with mathematicians for other uses as well. I haven't checked if maxima's answer is correct. The fact that one should worry about that usually causes much more serious concern than the form in which computer algebra packages give their answers. -- To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/sage-support URL: http://www.sagemath.org
