Slashdot Mirror
MATLAB Can't Manipulate 64-Bit Integers
An anonymous reader writes "MATLAB, an important package of mathematical software heavily used in industry and academia, has had support for 64-bit machines for several years now. However, the MATLAB developers still haven't gotten around to implementing even basic arithmetic operations for 64-bit integers. Attempting to add, divide, subtract, or multiply two 64-bit integers will result in an error message saying that the corresponding method does not exist. As one commentator put it, 'What is the point of having numerical data types that can't be manipulated?'" The post notes that the free MATLAB clone GNU Octave deals with 64-bit integers just fine.
What do we do when the value of 1 starts to float away?
QT/Octave:
>>> sqrt(-1)^((4)^1)
ans = 1
>>> sqrt(-1)^((4)^15)
ans = 1
>>> sqrt(-1)^((4)^16)
ans = 1.0000e+00 - 2.6298e-07i
>>> sqrt(-1)^((4)^17)
ans = 1.0000e+00 - 1.0519e-06i
>>> sqrt(-1)^((4)^21)
ans = 1.0000e+00 - 2.6929e-04i
>>> sqrt(-1)^((4)^22)
ans = 0.9999994 - 0.0010772i
>>> sqrt(-1)^((4)^32)
ans = 0.56253 + 0.82678i
>>> sqrt(-1)^((4)^40)
ans = -0.97448 + 0.22446i
The fractal community will be outraged.
Slashdot are going after the Yelp model. Looks like MATLAB hasn't been keeping up with their payments. Would hate for something to happen to all those great slashdot stories about you guys lately.