Opened 5 years ago
Last modified 3 years ago
#16753 needs_work defect
solve of equation system misses trivial simplifications
Reported by: | rws | Owned by: | |
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Priority: | critical | Milestone: | sage-6.4 |
Component: | calculus | Keywords: | |
Cc: | Merged in: | ||
Authors: | Akshay Ajagekar | Reviewers: | |
Report Upstream: | N/A | Work issues: | |
Branch: | u/ajagekar.akshay/Trac16753 (Commits) | Commit: | 88dec5a75c53522f0a24889b4e60efda0964d700 |
Dependencies: | Stopgaps: |
Description (last modified by )
Some trivial substitutions are not done by solve:
sage: x,y=var('x,y') sage: solve([y==exp(x),2*y-exp(x)==1],x,y) [y == e^x, 2*y - e^x == 1]
and, as reported in http://ask.sagemath.org/question/23652/solve-equations-with-sinx/
sage: solve([y==sin(x),y+4*sin(x)==5],x,y) [y == sin(x), y + 4*sin(x) == 5]
Change History (12)
comment:1 Changed 5 years ago by
- Description modified (diff)
- Priority changed from major to critical
comment:2 Changed 5 years ago by
- Milestone changed from sage-6.3 to sage-6.4
comment:3 Changed 3 years ago by
I think it is maxima which is unable to solve the equations and returns
%solve([y = sin(x), y + 4*sin(x) = 5],[x,y])
in this case. Sage converts this to list of solutions. Can we condition sage to return "Unable to solve" instead of returning the equations? while reporting this upstream.
comment:4 Changed 3 years ago by
You mean a general change for unsolved equations/relations? That would be a different ticket which you would have to open. I'm not against a change but I'd rather have solve return a set, and in case of unsolved an empty set.
comment:5 Changed 3 years ago by
A test which returned initial function instead of solutions was failing
solve([sin(x)==x,y^2==x],x,y) Expected: [sin(x) == x, y^2 == x] Got: []
I have changed that test. Please have a look.
comment:6 Changed 3 years ago by
- Branch set to u/ajagekar.akshay/Trac16753
comment:7 Changed 3 years ago by
- Commit set to 1961f9430ee403bb5632853af3e18d2d2c858187
Your ticket branch shows MeatAxe? changes. Probably you branched not from develop. Use git trac checkout
to have a proper start.
comment:8 Changed 3 years ago by
- Commit changed from 1961f9430ee403bb5632853af3e18d2d2c858187 to 88dec5a75c53522f0a24889b4e60efda0964d700
Branch pushed to git repo; I updated commit sha1. New commits:
88dec5a | Trac 16753 : solve of equation system misses trivial simplifications
|
comment:9 Changed 3 years ago by
Sorry for that mistake.
comment:10 Changed 3 years ago by
- Status changed from new to needs_review
comment:11 Changed 3 years ago by
- Status changed from needs_review to needs_work
This solution doesn't fly. Presently:
sage: solve([x==5],[x]) [x == 5]
with this patch, it would return []. That's bad.
In general, I think it's bad to silently returning an empty list in a case where we know we failed to "solve" the system. An empty list can be interpreted as an inconsistent system of equations.
The original behaviour, returning the original system, indicates better a failure to solve than an empty solution list does. Therefore, I think that is preferable.
You could argue that returning the original system would be "invalid" output, because usually it means that the LH sides of the equations aren't the to-be-solved-for variables and/or the RH sides won't be free of them.
In that case, returning an error is a better solution.
I think the parsing that happens for solution_dict=True
is definitely broken:
sage: solve([y == sin(x), y + 4*sin(x) == 5],[x,y],solution_dict=True) [{y: sin(x)}, {y + 4*sin(x): 5}]
Compared with
sage: solve([x^2==5,y==6],[x,y],solution_dict=True) [{y: 6, x: -sqrt(5)}, {y: 6, x: sqrt(5)}]
it's clearly very misleading output. So for solution_dict=True
I think we have a good case for an error. Without it, I think the current output is misleading. But so is:
sage: solve(x-1,x) [x == 1] sage: solve([x-1],[x]) [x == 1] sage: solve([x-1,y-1],[x,y]) [[x == 1, y == 1]] sage: solve([x-1],[x],solution_dict=True) TypeError: 'sage.symbolic.expression.Expression' object is not iterable
(we'd probably be better off if also in the single-variable case we'd also return list-of-lists etc.)
Beware of legacy, though. There might be users out there that have grown fond of this bad behaviour and somehow depend on it.
comment:12 Changed 3 years ago by
sage: solve([x==5],[x])
returns [x == 5]
as expected, the changed code gets executed only for system of equations.
Even for cases like
sage: solve([x==5,y==2],x,y)
maxima returns list of list as solution [[x == 5, y == 2]]
, so an empty set is not returned. I also think returning error would be better for unsolved equations. For TypeError?, the parsing for solution_dict = True
can be fixed by checking length of variables list and adding appropriate condition.
Set to critical because it makes Sage look really stupid.