LiveCode vs Fermat

[Igor de Oliveira Couto]

On 19 May 2014, at 8:28 am, Alejandro Tejada <capellan2000 at gmail.com> wrote:

> Dar Scott wrote
>> put 781769^12 + 852723^12 = 874456^12
>> 
>> See 
>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermat's_Last_Theorem
> 
> The result is TRUE...
> Could this be an error? :o

Indeed, it is. You can check it here:

http://www.wolframalpha.com

Just enter:

"781769^12 + 852723^12 = 874456^12"

It will confirm for you that it's *false*.

As an aside: the underlying computational 'engine' behind Wolfram Alpha products (such as Mathematica) is an open source maths library named "GMP Library" (GNU Multi-Precision Library). It allows for extremely fast calculation of arbitrarily large numbers.

Apart from GMP, there are *many* well-known, reliable open-source mathematical libraries, some able to do complex symbolic maths - some have even been developed in higher-level languages, like Python. They are cross-platform, and have GPL-compatible licenses. It would be an excellent idea if during the code refactoring that is happening right now, the LiveCode developers decided to implement one of these libraries as the mathematical engine for LiveCode.

Just a thought... In any case:

http://quality.runrev.com/show_bug.cgi?id=12440

--
Igor Couto
Sydney, Australia