Thanks. I was being a little dense in forgetting that it is solving for x, not for all values. My thinking gets a little muddled with grandkids around. I was just surprised at the neatness of the solution.
I played with products of consecutive numbers greater than 3 (are those still special products?) and p. still works until p. becomes unstable due to the order of the polynomial. I'm curious as to why the desired value for x is always the last root. Just the luck of the draw or is there some reason as to why it is always last. Do real values always come last? For the products of even consecutive numbers the number of real roots found by p. must be even. But the last one still seems to be the correct one. Take of two different product of 4 sequential numbers. Their gcd many cases is s special product. Those that aren't are a multiple of a special product. This seems to be the case that the gcd for the products of n consecutive integers is the a product or a multiple of n-1 and n-2 ... consecutive integers. The multiples seem to be in one consecutive group. Now that the grandkids are gone maybe I can play with this more with a clearer mind. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm
