[R] Solving 100th order equation

[Hans W. Borchers]

Rolf Turner <r.turner <at> auckland.ac.nz> writes:

>
>       [...]
> 
> 	However uniroot(p,c(1.995,2.005)) gives
> 
> 	$root
> 	[1] 1.999993
> 
> 	$f.root
> 	[1] -4.570875e+24
> 
> 	$iter
> 	[1] 4
> 
> 	$estim.prec
> 	[1] 6.103516e-05
> 
> 	What a difference 7.214144e-06 makes!  When you're dealing with  
> polynomials of degree 100.
> 

I don't think R is the right tool to solve this kind of questions that belong to
the realm of Computer Algebra Systems. Yacas is much to weak for such high-order
polybomials, but we can apply more powerful CASystems, for instance the free
Maxima system. Applying

(%i)    nroots(x^100 - 2*x^99 + 10*x^50 + 6*x - 4000, minf, inf)

immediately shows that there are only *two* real solutions, and then

(%i)    a: realroots(x^100 - 2*x^99 + 10*x^50 + 6*x - 4000, 1e-15);
(%i)    float(a)

(%o)    [x=-1.074126672042147,x=1.999999999999982]

will provide real solutions with 15 decimals (does not change when more decimals
are used). So the difference that counts is actually much smaller.

The complex roots -- if needed -- will require special treatment.

I believe it would be fair to point such questions to Computer Algebra mailing
lists and not try to give the appearance they could be solved satisfyingly with
R. The same as a complicated statistics question in a Matlab or Mathematica
mailing list should be pointed to R-help.

Hans Werner

> 	Bozhemoi!
> 
> 		cheers,
> 
> 			Rolf Turner