Hi Sage-Devel,
What do you think of this:
sage: var('x, i')
sage: solve(x^2 + i == 0, x)
[x == -sqrt(-I), x == sqrt(-I)]
Basically, I make a purely symbolic variable which I happen to call
"i", and it gets treated somewhere (presumably in Maxima) as if it
were sqrt(-1).
Here is another instance of this:
sage: var('i')
i
sage: a = i^2
sage: a
i^2
sage: a.simplify_full()
-1
So Ginac treats things fine, but our use of Maxima messes it up.
This came up for me just now when doing some symbolic calculation with
a quaternion algebra where the generators are called "i,j,k", and this
i has nothing to do with sqrt(-1).
Thoughts?
William
--
William Stein
Associate Professor of Mathematics
University of Washington
http://wstein.org
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