dwrfielder@dahlia.waterloo.edu (Dave Fielder) (06/25/91)
I originally mailed this letter to Marc E Blair, but have since had no response in over 2 weeks. I am not sure if he is the original programmer so I thought I'd post my questions to the net. I have a question as to why infinities occur in row reducing matrices when they are linearly dependant. eg. 1: [[ 1 1 a] [ 1 1 b]] rr 1: [[ 1 1 a] [ 0 0 b-a]] is what should occur but... 1: { { 0 1 'a*oo-b*00+2*a-b' } { 0 0 '-(a*oo^2)+b*oo^2' }} is what I get. I'm unsure as to why the infinities are necessary or how come they occur. Is there a workaround? If so, what is it? I love the fractions flag and think it's great. To give you some feedback, some of the fractions are a little off due to rounding, ie. 100000000001/300000000002 instead of 1/3. Could one of the various toQ programs help eliminate alot of the fraction errors? Thanks, --Dave Hubert.