Handling numbers near infinity (large and small) - ruby

I'm trying to do this operation with Ruby:
1.2679769534809603e-175
*
792621072814943158937574954417696054502273470568077747007887743862285047941581535541498718312275086275679893343076013862361579680670972527976009279036348551929550827607601145450876014530359530008733947699274904382825445634899233107885545828612637824213482759975963581961375904743254634250508637523339809985946128242523687347261107994804323593105039052556442336528920420940313
I know the answer is 1.005025 (truncated to 6 decimal places), but I keep getting the above equation returning infinity. Why is that? I'm not going smaller than the first number, nor larger than the second number.
So two questions: Why is it returning infinity? And how could I get the correct answer to return?

If you want to minimize precision issues, go Rational.
irb(main):001:0> a = 1.2679769534809603e-175.to_r
=> (4519585589664361/35644067325173400145634153169533525975728347712879374457649941546088087243817792082077443838416964060770643043543706307114755505635745609361348916560329798345718708393439569922522454626926592)
irb(main):002:0> b = 792621072814943158937574954417696054502273470568077747007887743862285047941581535541498718312275086275679893343076013862361579680670972527976009279036348551929550827607601145450876014530359530008733947699274904382825445634899233107885545828612637824213482759975963581961375904743254634250508637523339809985946128242523687347261107994804323593105039052556442336528920420940313
=> 792621072814943158937574954417696054502273470568077747007887743862285047941581535541498718312275086275679893343076013862361579680670972527976009279036348551929550827607601145450876014530359530008733947699274904382825445634899233107885545828612637824213482759975963581961375904743254634250508637523339809985946128242523687347261107994804323593105039052556442336528920420940313
irb(main):003:0> a * b
=> (3582318778758723293544808766608477208802528713781684733988516016569614012687037578637365969280014511731955915723620354805192948677648150726285518854921630223111683624006805801219885647290056974705691181872855057825408797944671825308998484595184690885834492619019604611321846034964892047367198046135813425296123973237329110031154221763204044754826429491855167243281047603348342563725684284993/35644067325173400145634153169533525975728347712879374457649941546088087243817792082077443838416964060770643043543706307114755505635745609361348916560329798345718708393439569922522454626926592)
irb(main):004:0> (a * b).to_f
=> 1.005025253172702e+200

After some playing around I believe your problem comes from autopromotion of the second number to perform float arithmetic.
puts "Original math"
z = 1.2679769534809603e-175 * 792621072814943158937574954417696054502273470568077747007887743862285047941581535541498718312275086275679893343076013862361579680670972527976009279036348551929550827607601145450876014530359530008733947699274904382825445634899233107885545828612637824213482759975963581961375904743254634250508637523339809985946128242523687347261107994804323593105039052556442336528920420940313
puts z
Infinity
puts
puts "Save variables individually and inspect"
x = 1.2679769534809603e-175
y = 792621072814943158937574954417696054502273470568077747007887743862285047941581535541498718312275086275679893343076013862361579680670972527976009279036348551929550827607601145450876014530359530008733947699274904382825445634899233107885545828612637824213482759975963581961375904743254634250508637523339809985946128242523687347261107994804323593105039052556442336528920420940313
puts x
1.2679769534809603e-175
puts y
792621072814943158937574954417696054502273470568077747007887743862285047941581535541498718312275086275679893343076013862361579680670972527976009279036348551929550827607601145450876014530359530008733947699274904382825445634899233107885545828612637824213482759975963581961375904743254634250508637523339809985946128242523687347261107994804323593105039052556442336528920420940313
z = x * y
puts z
Infinity
puts "What? none of the numbers was Infinity??"
puts "Or was it?? auto promoted y"
y = 792621072814943158937574954417696054502273470568077747007887743862285047941581535541498718312275086275679893343076013862361579680670972527976009279036348551929550827607601145450876014530359530008733947699274904382825445634899233107885545828612637824213482759975963581961375904743254634250508637523339809985946128242523687347261107994804323593105039052556442336528920420940313.0
puts y
Infinity
In most languages anything * Infinity = +- infinity

Related

How do I use multiple integers in an equation (Ruby)

I coded a conversion tool from binary to integer, but it had a limit on how large the number can be. So, I tried to code a formula for binary. I came up with an equation, so I tried to put it into code. Everything worked, except for applying the equation to each digit. This is the equation I came up with:
Let d represent the integer
Let z represent any (and every) digit
d = z[2^(z-1)]
This is what I've coded so far:
answer = gets.chomp
n = answer.reverse # reverses the answer
y1 = answer.size # the amount of digits in the answer
x1 = answer
z = (1..y1).each { |z| puts z } # every number between 1 and number of digits
w = (1..1).each.to_a * y1.to_i #in case I need to multiply the entire array
s = x1 # [z] - 1 # any given digit minus one
v = 2 ** s.to_i # exponent
u = z.zip(w).map{|x, y| x * y} # an array: [1, 2, 3]
print u
t = u.to_i # Tried converting to integer
puts x1[t]
But when I ran that, for example, with the number 1011, I got this error:
[1, 2, 3, 4]
undefined method `to_i' for [1, 2, 3, 4]:Array
Did you mean? to_s
to_a
to_h
(repl):16:in `<main>'
I feel like I have tried everything, but if you somehow find a way to apply the equation to every digit, or if you come up with a simpler equation, please tell me.
This return an array u = z.zip(w).map{|x, y| x * y} so you are triying to conver an array to integer. If you want, you can do something like this:
array = [1,0,1] #your binary in array form
s = array.join('') #transform it into string
s.to_i(2) #this return the integer and result (2) represents base
Check this link
And for better: array.join('').to_i(2)

Why is 10^9942066 the biggest power I can calculate without overflows?

In ruby, some large numbers are larger than infinity. Through binary search, I discovered:
(1.0/0) > 10**9942066.000000001 # => false
(1.0/0) > 10**9942066 # => true
RUBY_VERSION # => "2.3.0"
Why is this? What is special about 109942066? It doesn't seem to be an arbitrary number like 9999999, it is not close to any power of two (it's approximately equivelent to 233026828.36662442).
Why isn't ruby's infinity infinite? How is 109942066 involved?
I now realize, any number greater than 109942066 will overflow to infinity:
10**9942066.000000001 #=> Infinity
10**9942067 #=> Infinity
But that still leaves the question: Why 109942066?
TL;DR
I did the calculations done inside numeric.c's int_pow manually, checking where an integer overflow (and a propagation to Bignum's, including a call to rb_big_pow) occurs. Once the call to rb_big_pow happens there is a check whether the two intermediate values you've got in int_pow are too large or not, and the cutoff value seems to be just around 9942066 (if you're using a base of 10 for the power). Approximately this value is close to
BIGLEN_LIMIT / ceil(log2(base^n)) * n ==
32*1024*1024 / ceil(log2(10^16)) * 16 ==
32*1024*1024 / 54 * 16 ~=
9942054
where BIGLEN_LIMIT is an internal limit in ruby which is used as a constant to check if a power calculation would be too big or not, and is defined as 32*1024*1024. base is 10, and n is the largest power-of-2 exponent for the base that would still fit inside a Fixnum.
Unfortunately I can't find a better way than this approximation, due to the algorithm used to calculate powers of big numbers, but it might be good enough to use as an upper limit if your code needs to check validity before doing exponentiation on big numbers.
Original question:
The problem is not with 9942066, but that with one of your number being an integer, the other one being a float. So
(10**9942066).class # => Bignum
(10**9942066.00000001).class # => Float
The first one is representable by a specific number internally, which is smaller than Infinity. The second one, as it's still a float is not representable by an actual number, and is simply replaced by Infinity, which is of course not larger than Infinity.
Updated question:
You are right that there seem to be some difference around 9942066 (if you're using a 64-bit ruby under Linux, as the limits might be different under other systems). While ruby does use the GMP library to handle big numbers, it does some precheck before even going to GMP, as shown by the warnings you can receive. It will also do the exponentiation manually using GMP's mul commands, without calling GMP's pow functions.
Fortunately the warnings are easy to catch:
irb(main):010:0> (10**9942066).class
=> Bignum
irb(main):005:0> (10**9942067).class
(irb):5: warning: in a**b, b may be too big
=> Float
And then you can actually check where these warnings are emitted inside ruby's bignum.c library.
But first we need to get to the Bignum realm, as both of our numbers are simple Fixnums. The initial part of the calculation, and the "upgrade" from fixnum to bignum is done inside numeric.c. Ruby does quick exponentiation, and at every step it checks whether the result would still fit into a Fixnum (which is 2 bits less than the system bitsize: 62 bits on a 64 bit machine). If not, it will then convert the values to the Bignum realm, and continues the calculations there. We are interested at the point where this conversion happens, so let's try to figure out when it does in our 10^9942066 example (I'm using x,y,z variables as present inside the ruby's numeric.c code):
x = 10^1 z = 10^0 y = 9942066
x = 10^2 z = 10^0 y = 4971033
x = 10^2 z = 10^2 y = 4971032
x = 10^4 z = 10^2 y = 2485516
x = 10^8 z = 10^2 y = 1242758
x = 10^16 z = 10^2 y = 621379
x = 10^16 z = 10^18 y = 621378
x = OWFL
At this point x will overflow (10^32 > 2^62-1), so the process will continue on the Bignum realm by calculating x**y, which is (10^16)^621378 (which are actually still both Fixnums at this stage)
If you now go back to bignum.c and check how it determines if a number is too large or not, you can see that it will check the number of bits required to hold x, and multiply this number with y. If the result is larger than 32*1024*1024, it will then fail (emit a warning and does the calculations using basic floats).
(10^16) is 54 bits (ceil(log_2(10^16)) == 54), 54*621378 is 33554412. This is only slightly smaller than 33554432 (by 20), the limit after which ruby will not do Bignum exponentiation, but simply convert y to double, and hope for the best (which will obviously fail, and just return Infinity)
Now let's try to check this with 9942067:
x = 10^1 z = 10^0 y = 9942067
x = 10^1 z = 10^1 y = 9942066
x = 10^2 z = 10^1 y = 4971033
x = 10^2 z = 10^3 y = 4971032
x = 10^4 z = 10^3 y = 2485516
x = 10^8 z = 10^3 y = 1242758
x = 10^16 z = 10^3 y = 621379
x = 10^16 z = OWFL
Here, at the point z overflows (10^19 > 2^62-1), the calculation will continue on the Bignum realm, and will calculate x**y. Note that here it will calculate (10^16)^621379, and while (10^16) is still 54 bits, 54*621379 is 33554466, which is larger than 33554432 (by 34). As it's larger you'll get the warning, and ruby will only to calculations using double, hence the result is Infinity.
Note that these checks are only done if you are using the power function. That's why you can still do (10**9942066)*10, as similar checks are not present when doing plain multiplication, meaning you could implement your own quick exponentiation method in ruby, in which case it will still work with larger values, although you won't have this safety check anymore. See for example this quick implementation:
def unbounded_pow(x,n)
if n < 0
x = 1.0 / x
n = -n
end
return 1 if n == 0
y = 1
while n > 1
if n.even?
x = x*x
n = n/2
else
y = x*y
x = x*x
n = (n-1)/2
end
end
x*y
end
puts (10**9942066) == (unbounded_pow(10,9942066)) # => true
puts (10**9942067) == (unbounded_pow(10,9942067)) # => false
puts ((10**9942066)*10) == (unbounded_pow(10,9942067)) # => true
But how would I know the cutoff for a specific base?
My math is not exactly great, but I can tell a way to approximate where the cutoff value will be. If you check the above calls you can see the conversion between Fixnum and Bignum happens when the intermediate base reaches the limit of Fixnum. The intermediate base at this stage will always have an exponent which is a power of 2, so you just have to maximize this value. For example let's try to figure out the maximum cutoff value for 12.
First we have to check what is the highest base we can store in a Fixnum:
ceil(log2(12^1)) = 4
ceil(log2(12^2)) = 8
ceil(log2(12^4)) = 15
ceil(log2(12^8)) = 29
ceil(log2(12^16)) = 58
ceil(log2(12^32)) = 115
We can see 12^16 is the max we can store in 62 bits, or if we're using a 32 bit machine 12^8 will fit into 30 bits (ruby's Fixnums can store values up to two bits less than the machine size limit).
For 12^16 we can easily determine the cutoff value. It will be 32*1024*1024 / ceil(log2(12^16)), which is 33554432 / 58 ~= 578525. We can easily check this in ruby now:
irb(main):004:0> ((12**16)**578525).class
=> Bignum
irb(main):005:0> ((12**16)**578526).class
(irb):5: warning: in a**b, b may be too big
=> Float
Now we hate to go back to our original base of 12. There the cutoff will be around 578525*16 (16 being the exponent of the new base), which is 9256400. If you check in ruby, the values are actually quite close to this number:
irb(main):009:0> (12**9256401).class
=> Bignum
irb(main):010:0> (12**9256402).class
(irb):10: warning: in a**b, b may be too big
=> Float
Note that the problem is not with the number but with the operation, as told by the warning you get.
$ ruby -e 'puts (1.0/0) > 10**9942067'
-e:1: warning: in a**b, b may be too big
false
The problem is 10**9942067 breaks Ruby's power function. Instead of throwing an exception, which would be a better behavior, it erroneously results in infinity.
$ ruby -e 'puts 10**9942067'
-e:1: warning: in a**b, b may be too big
Infinity
The other answer explains why this happens near 10e9942067.
10**9942067 is not greater than infinity, it is erroneously resulting in infinity. This is a bad habit of a lot of math libraries that makes mathematicians claw their eyeballs out in frustration.
Infinity is not greater than infinity, they're equal, so your greater than check is false. You can see this by checking if they're equal.
$ ruby -e 'puts (1.0/0) == 10**9942067'
-e:1: warning: in a**b, b may be too big
true
Contrast this with specifying the number directly using scientific notation. Now Ruby doesn't have to do math on huge numbers, it just knows that any real number is less than infinity.
$ ruby -e 'puts (1.0/0) > 10e9942067'
false
Now you can put on as big an exponent as you like.
$ ruby -e 'puts (1.0/0) > 10e994206700000000000000000000000000000000'
false

All possible products

I'm trying to find all possible product of two 3-digit numbers. When I work with small ranges, I'm able to get an output in short amount of time but when the ranges are big, it seems to take really long time. Is there any way to to shorten the time to get the result?
The problem I'm working on is:
"A palindromic number reads the same both ways. The largest palindrome made from the product of two 2-digit numbers is 9009 = 91 × 99.
Find the largest palindrome made from the product of two 3-digit numbers."
a = []
for x in 100..999
for y in 100..999
num = (x * y)
unless a.include? num
a.push num
end
end
end
p a
This is going to compute 100 x 101 and 101 x 100 separately, even though they're not going to be pushed to the array since they're already in it.
I'm bad at math, but maybe every time x goes up, y's minimum range can go up since that one was just used? people who are better at math can tell me if this is going to start missing numbers.
z= 100
for x in 100..999
for y in z..999
num = (x * y)
unless a.include? num
a.push num
end
z = z+1
end
end
I think doing this might make the "unless a.include? num" line unnecessary, too.
Looking at your code a quick optimization you can make is to use a set rather than an array to store the already computed products.
Since a is an array, a.include?(num) will have to iterate through the entire list of elements before returning true / false.
If a were to be a set, a.include?(num) will return in sub linear time.
Example:
require 'set'
a = Set.new
for x in 100..999
for y in 100..999
num = (x * y)
unless a.include? num
a.add(num)
end
end
end
puts a.to_a.join(", ")
Moreover one of the nice properties of a set is that it only stores unique elements so the following would be equivalent:
require 'set'
a = Set.new
for x in 100..999
for y in 100..999
num = (x * y)
a.add(num)
end
end
puts a.to_a.join(", ")
What are you really trying to do, i.e. what is the original problem, and why do you need all of these products?
Are you printing every single one out? Is someone asking you for a concrete list of every single one?
If not, there is likely a better way to deal with this problem. For example, if all you wanted is to check if a number X will be an element in "that list of products", all you'd have to do is:
range = 100..999
range.any? { |i| range.include?(x / i) }

How can I use user inputs for math?

I have this function:
def func()
puts "Give a value for x \n>"
x = gets.chomp
puts "Give a value for y \n>"
y = gets.chomp
z = x + y
puts z
end
If a user inputs 5 for x and 5 for y, I want z to make 5 + 5 and print 10, but this will print 55 instead.
The values you've read are stored as strings, and with strings, the + operator performs concatenation. You need to convert both inputs to integers if you want to perform integer arithmetic:
z = x.to_i + y.to_i
Another way to get there:
x = '5'
y = '5'
[x, y].map(&:to_i).inject(:+)
=> 10
z = x.to_i + y.to_i
Just convert input strings to integer or float (to_f)

Syntax Error in Ruby, Unexpected Pipe Character in a Do

I'll try to be concise this time around! I'm still working Project Euler, this time back to #2. My real issue here is I'm terrible with Ruby. When I run the following code
x = 1
y = 2
sum = 2
while x >= 4_000_000 do |x|
sum += y if y % 2 == 0
z = x + y
x = x ^ y # xor magic
y = x ^ y # xor magic
x = x ^ y # xor magic
y = z
end
p sum
My interpreter kicks out the following output:
/Users/Andy/Documents/Programming/Ruby/ProjectEuler/P2.rb:4: syntax error, unexpected '|'
while x >= 4_000_000 do |x|
                         ^
I'm reading why's (Poignant) Guide to Ruby, and I'm pretty sure I have the pipe syntax correct for the Do. Could someone point out what I'm doing wrong here? I've tried messing around in a lot of different ways and am coming up short handed
while (x >= 4_000_000)
foo
end
You don't even have to pass in x, because it's accessible in the scope of the enclosing block.
while does not take a block. Remove the do |x| part.
while is not a method that takes a block, it is a ruby looping statement. It considers the part between the while and do (or newline) to be the logical test and the part between the do (or newline) and end keyword to be the loop body.
while x < 10 do x += 1; puts x; end
while x < 10
x += 1
puts x
end
Contrast this with something like the Array's each method which takes in a block. Here the each method calls your block for each element of the array (passed into the block as x)
[1,2,3].each do |x|
puts x
end
You accidentally combined the two, asking the while loop to call your code block with the loop counter to be passed in as x. That is not how while works... hence the parsing exception.
What an interesting question! It inspired me to take a shot at the problem, too. Here's my solution.
First, some preparatory work:
class Enumerator
def lazy_select
Enumerator.new do |y|
each do |el|
y.yield(el) if yield el
end
end
end
alias_method :lazy_find_all, :lazy_select
end
module Enumerable
def sum
reduce(:+)
end
end
module Math
ROOT5 = Math.sqrt(5)
PHI = 0.5 + ROOT5/2
def self.fibonacci(n)
Integer(0.5 + PHI**n/ROOT5)
end
end
class Integer
def fibonacci
Math.fibonacci(self)
end
end
Now an Enumerator which generates an infinite sequence of Fibonacci Numbers:
fibs = Enumerator.new do |y|
n = -1
loop do
y.yield (n += 1).fibonacci
end
end
And the nice thing is that we can now directly express the original problem statement in code:
Find the sum of all the even-valued terms in the sequence which do not exceed four million.
puts fibs.lazy_find_all(&:even?).take_while {|n| n <= 4_000_000 }.sum
I think that this is a much more Rubyish way to solve the problem. You write in your question that you are terrible with Ruby. But that's not actually the problem. The real problem is that you are good with C! In other words, the real problem is that you simply aren't writing Ruby, you are writing C with Ruby syntax.
Two good examples are:
y % 2 == 0
and
x = x ^ y
y = x ^ y
x = x ^ y
The Ruby way to write these would be
y.even?
and
x, y = y, x

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