My Math Forum Fundamental operations and recursive operations

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 September 17th, 2014, 01:41 PM #1 Newbie   Joined: Sep 2014 From: England Posts: 2 Thanks: 0 Fundamental operations and recursive operations Hi folks, I'm trying to create a mathematical formula evolution program, I represent formulae as node trees which acts as the genome, which in (my) theory can express any formula that can exist by using numbers as the leaf nodes, and the four fundamental math operations namely; Add, Subtract, Multiply and Divide. I'm assuming all other mathematical operations are shorthand ways of writing functions that the above make up. I also assume all operators take either 1 or 2 value inputs. Like, 2x4 has two numerical inputs. However, if you spend five minutes looking into mathematical operations on the internet, you find all sorts of other ones, like the logarithm function, modulus function, sine and cosine, the list goes on. Now, what I really need to know, is for the purposes of defining a formula in the smallest amount of characters (characters as in letters, numbers and operators), what are the mathematical operators I need? Another example may explain what I mean: If I only use the fundamental operators, I'd have to write "5x5x5x5", which is seven characters, but I could have written it as "5^4" which is only three. A more pressing example is factorials, so "6x5x4x3x2x1" is 11 characters long, and very unlikely to happen by chance in my program, whereas "6!" is only 2 characters, and much more likely and useful! So, any common math operators you think I should be including would be great! So far, I have "Add, Subtract, Multiply, Divide, Cosine, Sine, Tangent, Modulus, Factorial, Root, Power, Logarithm"... Any others anyone can think of would be a MASSIVE HELP! I'll be checking frequently, and giving feedback on suggestions
 September 17th, 2014, 02:48 PM #2 Math Team     Joined: May 2013 From: The Astral plane Posts: 2,162 Thanks: 879 Math Focus: Wibbly wobbly timey-wimey stuff. sinh, cosh, tanh -Dan
 September 18th, 2014, 06:02 AM #3 Global Moderator     Joined: Nov 2006 From: UTC -5 Posts: 16,046 Thanks: 938 Math Focus: Number theory, computational mathematics, combinatorics, FOM, symbolic logic, TCS, algorithms You may wish to look at the similar project ries RIES - Find Algebraic Equations, Given Their Solution at MROB and see if you can glean anything there. As for operations, I'm partial to Lambert's W. Also useful is the Riemann's zeta function. For great generality you could implement (or more likely, find an existing implementation of) the hypergeometric function -- although it doesn't take 1 or 2 arguments like your other functions but 4 (!).
 September 18th, 2014, 12:01 PM #4 Newbie   Joined: Sep 2014 From: England Posts: 2 Thanks: 0 Thank you both for your replies! Particularly you, Greathouse, that link you provided is proving a facinating read, I'm going through the comments at the top of the code script, and buried in there is a list of operators they've used. Their goal is slightly different to mine, but it's proving to be a great help! I'm working out the solution to a series rather than a single number, but very closely related otherwise. Thank you! Here's the bit I'm finding most useful; Code: sym stack-effect description 0x1 -- Phantom symbol for argument-reversed version of - 0x2 -- Phantom symbol for argument-reversed version of / 0x4 -- Phantom symbol for argument-reversed version of ^ ' ' -- Blank space: no operation (for --eval-expression) 0 (-- 0) The constant 0.0 (not currently used, but will have a role soon as part of --numeric.anagram) 1 (-- 1) The constant 1.0 2 (-- 2) The constant 2.0 3 (-- 3) The constant 3.0 4 (-- 4) The constant 4.0 5 (-- 5) The constant 5.0 6 (-- 6) The constant 6.0 7 (-- 7) The constant 7.0 8 (-- 8) The constant 8.0 9 (-- 9) The constant 9.0 ! (a -- f) Factorial monad f(x) = x! = Gamma[x+1] (reserved, not yet implemented) # (n d -- x) Digit paste operator x(n,d) = 10*n+d (reserved, not yet implemented. This is to make --numeric.anagram more useful) % (a b -- m) (reserved for modulo or remainder?) ^ (a b -- f) Power: f(a,b) = a^b * (a b -- p) Multiply+ p(a,b) = a*b ( -- Comment delimiter; used to bracket custom symbol names; used as a placeholder during infix translation ) -- Comment delimiter; used to bracket custom symbol names; used as a placeholder during infix translation - (a b -- d) Subtract: d(a,b) = a-b + (a b -- s) Add: s(a,b) = a+b : -- Function definition start ; -- Function definition end . -- Placeholder for multiplication during infix formatting / (a b -- r) Divide: r(a,b) = a/b A (x -- a) Arctangent a(x) = atan(x) (reserved, not yet used) C (x -- c) Cosine c(x) = cos(pi x) E (x -- f) Exponential function f(x) = e^x G (x -- g) Gamma function g(x) = Gamma[x] = (x-1)! (reserved, not yet implemented) I (x -- x) Identity function x(x) = x (not used in expressions, but used as a placeholder during infix translation) L (a b -- l) Arbitrary logarithm l(a,b) = log_b(a) S (x -- s) Sine s(x) = sin(pi x) T (x -- t) Tangent t(x) = tan(pi x) W (x -- w) Lambert W function, e.g. w(10.0) = 1.74553... e (-- e) The constant 2.71828... f (-- f) The constant 1.61803... l (a -- l) Natural logarithm: l(a) = ln(a) n (a -- n) Negate: n(a) = -a p (-- p) The constant 3.14159... q (a -- q) Square root: q(a) = sqrt(a) r (a -- r) Reciprocal: r(a) = 1/a s (a -- s) Square: s(a) = a*a v (a b -- v) Root: v(a,b) = a^(1/b) x (-- x) The user's target number
 September 18th, 2014, 06:26 PM #5 Senior Member   Joined: Aug 2008 From: Blacksburg VA USA Posts: 346 Thanks: 6 Math Focus: primes of course (suggestions, probably from a programming vantage) you may want some set of floor/ceiling/round/truncate operators you need parity, which you can get via modulus/remainder ops. root seems duplicitious with power if you add negation, then subtract falls out of addition with negated values. similarly, adding inverse allows division to fall out of multiply, root from power you might consider some sort of venn operations (and/or etc) Depending on your ultimate objective, binary may be of particular use, and therefore bitwise operations maybe "assignment" is implied? a=b what of comparators (<,>,!=,==)
 September 18th, 2014, 10:12 PM #6 Banned Camp   Joined: Dec 2012 Posts: 1,028 Thanks: 24 Sum and difference. all the rest are human inventions ;-P

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