Octave: Number too large for mod() - octave

In Octave
> mod(10^15 + 1, 2)
ans = 1
as expected, but
> mod(10^16 + 1, 2)
ans = 0
Same goes for larger numbers.
I was under the assumption that if the numbers were too large the first operand would have been evaluated as Inf which would give NaN as a result. Why is something different happening here? Octave function reference for mod doesn't mention anything.

10^16 + 1 happens to evaluate to 10^16 because the +1 is too small for the 64-bit floating point representation that is being used. This is a case of round-off error.
Since 10^16 is even you actually get the correct result from mod.

Related

Converting a decimal number x > 1 with n decimals to binary (for example: 70,5)

For homework I am to convert a decimal number to binary. This is usually pretty easy, but I have no idea how to it with a number like 70,5.
I know that there is the multiplication algorithm for x < 1, but here, x > 1. I was thinking about maybe writing 70,5 as a sum of numbers that are < 1, then find the binary expressions of these and take the sum. But I'm not sure this is the right approach.
Any ideas?
I found out how to do it!! Just find the binary of 70 (1000110), the binary of .5 (.1) and put them together like 1000110.1 :D

What's the proper use of output property in Octave?

I am not sure what is the use of output while using fminunc.
>>options = optimset('GradObj','on','MaxIter','1');
>>initialTheta=zeros(2,1);
>>[optTheta, functionVal, exitFlag, output, grad, hessian]=
fminunc(#CostFunc,initialTheta,options);
>> output
output =
scalar structure containing the fields:
iterations = 11
successful = 10
funcCount = 21
Even when I use max no of iteration = 1 still it is giving no of iteration = 11??
Could anyone please explain me why is this happening?
help me with grad and hessian properties too, means the use of those.
Given we don't have the full code, I think the easiest thing for you to do to understand exactly what is happening is to just set a breakpoint in fminunc.m itself, and follow the logic of the code. This is one of the nice things about working with Octave, since the source code is provided and you can check it freely (there's often useful information in octave source code in fact, such as references to papers which they relied on for the implementation, etc).
From a quick look, it doesn't seem like fminunc expects a maxiter of 1. Have a look at line 211:
211 while (niter < maxiter && nfev < maxfev && ! info)
Since niter is initialised just before (at line 176) with the value of 1, in theory this loop will never be entered if your maxiter is 1, which defeats the whole point of the optimization.
There are other interesting things happening in there too, e.g. the inner while loop starting at line 272:
272 while (! suc && niter <= maxiter && nfev < maxfev && ! info)
This uses "shortcut evaluation", to first check if the previous iteration was "unsuccessful", before checking if the number of iterations are less than "maxiter".
In other words, if the previous iteration was successful, you don't get to run the inner loop at all, and you never get to increment niter.
What flags an iteration as "successful" seems to be defined by the ratio of "actual vs predicted reduction", as per the following (non-consecutive) lines:
286 actred = (fval - fval1) / (abs (fval1) + abs (fval));
...
295 prered = -t/(abs (fval) + abs (fval + t));
296 ratio = actred / prered;
...
321 if (ratio >= 1e-4)
322 ## Successful iteration.
...
326 nsuciter += 1;
...
328 endif
329
330 niter += 1;
In other words, it seems like fminunc will respect your maxiters ignoring whether these have been "successful" or "unsuccessful", with the exception that it does not like to "end" the algorithm at a "successful" turn (since the success condition needs to be fulfilled first before the maxiters condition is checked).
Obviously this is an academic point, since you shouldn't even be entering this inner loop when you couldn't even make it past the outer loop in the first place.
I cannot really know exactly what is going on without knowing your specific code, but you should be able to follow easily if you run your code with a breakpoint at fminunc. The maths behind that implementation may be complex, but the code itself seems fairly simple and straightforward enough to follow.
Good luck!

Unexpected results of find function in matlab

t=find(str.tubetime >= str.time,1);
assume tubetime is a matrix of 1 x 1001 elements
assume time is a double =0.0012
From what I understand of the code is it finds the first value of the tubetime matrix which is
of equal or greater value returning the index of where this value is found in tubetime.
If I am correct, why am I getting an index value of 244. When the value of 0.0012 is contained at index points starting at 231 through to the index point 250.
Edit:
I have just double checked my variables are accurate, as I am currently in debug mode, and reading it back from the system. Thank you for your input, do you have any idea what could be wrong with it?
Here is a screenshot showing the values
When you view the values in printscreen it is probably cutting off after the 4th decimal place. See my comment above on your original post.
Your description of FIND is correct, but one of your variables is not as you described it. e.g.,
t=find([1 1 2 3 4 5 6] >= 3,1)
returns 4, as it should.
You have specifically asked that it should return only one element in your syntax
time = zeros(1,1001);
time(231:250) = 0.0012 % setting an array where indices 231 - 250 are 0.0012 else is zero
find(time>=0.0012)
% gives all indices
find(time>=0.0012,1)
%returns 231 only
find(time>=0.0012,2)
%returns 231,232
PLUS check that the values are not shown in short format, that is they are 0.001199 but shown as 0.0012.

Compute real roots of a quadratic equation in Pascal

I am trying to solve this problem :
(Write a program to compute the real roots of a quadratic equation (ax2 + bx + c = 0). The roots can be calculated using the following formulae:
x1 = (-b + sqrt(b2 - 4ac))/2a
and
x2 = (-b - sqrt(b2 - 4ac))/2a
I wrote the following code, but its not correct:
program week7_lab2_a1;
var a,b,c,i:integer;
x,x1,x2:real;
begin
write('Enter the value of a :');
readln(a);
write('Enter the value of b :');
readln(b);
write('Enter the value of c :');
readln(c);
if (sqr(b)-4*a*c)>=0 then
begin
if ((a>0) and (b>0)) then
begin
x1:=(-1*b+sqrt(sqr(b)-4*a*c))/2*a;
x2:=(-1*b-sqrt(sqr(b)-4*a*c))/2*a;
writeln('x1=',x1:0:2);
writeln('x2=',x2:0:2);
end
else
if ((a=0) and (b=0)) then
write('The is no solution')
else
if ((a=0) and (b<>0)) then
begin
x:=-1*c/b;
write('The only root :',x:0:2);
end;
end
else
if (sqr(b)-4*a*c)<0 then
write('The is no real root');
readln;
end.
do you know why?
and taking a=-6,b=7,c=8 .. can you desk-check it after writing the pesudocode?
You have an operator precedence error here:
x1:=(-1*b+sqrt(sqr(b)-4*a*c))/2*a;
x2:=(-1*b-sqrt(sqr(b)-4*a*c))/2*a;
See at the end, the 2 * a doesn't do what you think it does. It does divide the expression by 2, but then multiplies it by a, because of precedence rules. This is what you want:
x1:=(-1*b+sqrt(sqr(b)-4*a*c))/(2*a);
x2:=(-1*b-sqrt(sqr(b)-4*a*c))/(2*a);
In fact, this is because the expression is evaluated left-to-right wrt brackets and that multiplication and division have the same priority. So basically, once it's divided by 2, it says "I'm done with division, I will multiply what I have now with a as told".
As it doesn't really seem clear from the formula you were given, this is the quadratic formula:
As you can see you need to divide by 2a, so you must use brackets here to make it work properly, just as the correct text-only expression for this equation is x = (-b +- sqrt(b^2 - 4ac)) / (2a).
Otherwise the code looks fine, if somewhat convoluted (for instance, you could discard cases where (a = 0) and (b = 0) right after input, which would simplify the logic a bit later on). Did you really mean to exclude negative coefficients though, or just zero coefficients? You should check that.
Also be careful with floating-point equality comparison - it works fine with 0, but will usually not work with most constants, so use an epsilon instead if you need to check if one value is equal to another (like such: abs(a - b) < 1e-6)
Completely agree with what Thomas said in his answer. Just want to add some optimization marks:
You check the discriminant value in if-statement, and then use it again:
if (sqr(b)-4*a*c)>=0 then
...
x1:=(-1*b+sqrt(sqr(b)-4*a*c))/2*a;
x2:=(-1*b-sqrt(sqr(b)-4*a*c))/2*a;
This not quite efficient - instead of evaluating discriminant value at once you compute it multiple times. You should first compute discriminant value and store it into some variable:
D := sqr(b)-4*a*c;
and after that you can use your evaluated value in all expressions, like this:
if (D >= 0) then
...
x1:=(-b+sqrt(D)/(2*a);
x2:=(-b-sqrt(D)/(2*a);
and so on.
Also, I wouldn't write -1*b... Instead of this just use -b or 0-b in worst case, but not multiplication. Multiplication here is not needed.
EDIT:
One more note:
Your code:
if (sqr(b)-4*a*c)>=0 then
begin
...
end
else
if (sqr(b)-4*a*c)<0 then
write('The is no real root');
You here double check the if-condition. I simplify this:
if (a) then
begin ... end
else
if (not a)
...
Where you check for not a (in your code it corresponds to (sqr(b)-4*a*c)<0) - in this case condition can be only false (for a) and there is no need to double check it. You should just throw it out.

Determining the input of a function given an output (Calculus involved)

My Calculus teacher gave us a program on to calculate the definite integrals of a given interval using the trapezoidal rule. I know that programmed functions take an input and produce an output as arithmetic functions would but I don't know how to do the inverse: find the input given the output.
The problem states:
"Use the trapezoidal rule with varying numbers, n, of increments to estimate the distance traveled from t=0 to t=9. Find a number D for which the trapezoidal sum is within 0.01 unit of this limit (468) when n > D."
I've estimated the limit through "plug and chug" with the calculator and I know that with a regular algebraic function, I could easily do:
limit (468) = algebraic expression with variable x
(then solve for x)
However, how would I do this for a programmed function? How would I determine the input of a programmed function given output?
I am calculating the definite integral for the polynomial, (x^2+11x+28)/(x+4), between the interval 0 and 9. The trapezoidal rule function in my calculator calculates the definite integral between the interval 0 and 9 using a given number of trapezoids, n.
Overall, I want to know how to do this:
Solve for n:
468 = trapezoidal_rule(a = 0, b = 9, n);
The code for trapezoidal_rule(a, b, n) on my TI-83:
Prompt A
Prompt B
Prompt N
(B-A)/N->D
0->S
A->X
Y1/2->S
For(K,1,N-1,1)
X+D->X
Y1+S->S
End
B->X
Y1/2+S->S
SD->I
Disp "INTEGRAL"
Disp I
Because I'm not familiar with this syntax nor am I familiar with computer algorithms, I was hoping someone could help me turn this code into an algebraic equation or point me in the direction to do so.
Edit: This is not part of my homework—just intellectual curiosity
the polynomial, (x^2+11x+28)/(x+4)
This is equal to x+7. The trapezoidal rule should give exactly correct results for this function! I'm guessing that this isn't actually the function you're working with...
There is no general way to determine, given the output of a function, what its input was. (For one thing, many functions can map multiple different inputs to the same output.)
So, there is a formula for the error when you apply the trapezoidal rule with a given number of steps to a given function, and you could use that here to work out the value of n you need ... but (1) it's not terribly beautiful, and (2) it doesn't seem like a very reasonable thing to expect you to do when you're just starting to look at the trapezoidal rule. I'd guess that your teacher actually just wanted you to "plug and chug".
I don't know (see above) what function you're actually integrating, but let's pretend it's just x^2+11x+28. I'll call this f(x) below. The integral of this from 0 to 9 is actually 940.5. Suppose you divide the interval [0,9] into n pieces. Then the trapezoidal rule gives you: [f(0)/2 + f(1*9/n) + f(2*9/n) + ... + f((n-1)*9/n) + f(9)/2] * 9/n.
Let's separate this out into the contributions from x^2, from 11x, and from 28. It turns out that the trapezoidal approximation gives exactly the right result for the latter two. (Exercise: Work out why.) So the error you get from the trapezoidal rule is exactly the same as the error you'd have got from f(x) = x^2.
The actual integral of x^2 from 0 to 9 is (9^3-0^3)/3 = 243. The trapezoidal approximation is [0/2 + 1^2+2^2+...+(n-1)^2 + n^2/2] * (9/n)^2 * (9/n). (Exercise: work out why.) There's a standard formula for sums of consecutive squares: 1^2 + ... + n^2 = n(n+1/2)(n+1)/3. So our trapezoidal approximation to the integral of x^2 is (9/n)^3 times [(n-1)(n-1/2)n/3 + n^2/2] = (9/n)^3 times [n^3/3+1/6] = 243 + (9/n)^3/6.
In other words, the error in this case is exactly (9/n)^3/6 = (243/2) / n^3.
So, for instance, the error will be less than 0.01 when (243/2) / n^3 < 0.01, which is the same as n^3 > 100*243/2 = 12150, which is true when n >= 23.
[EDITED to add: I haven't checked any of my algebra or arithmetic carefully; there may be small errors. I take it what you're interested is the ideas rather than the specific numbers.]