About Symbolic Calculation Page 1 of 2

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Mathcad Prime 3.0 - Symbolics and Solving
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About Symbolic Calculation

In addition to performing numerical calculations with PTC Mathcad, you can also perform
operations on symbolic expressions that contain variables or mathematical symbols. PTC Mathcad
returns the results in symbolic form.
In symbolic calculation, expressions are evaluated using the symbolic evaluation operator
rather than the numerical evaluation operator =. You can evaluate all of the standard PTC Mathcad
operators and many built-in functions symbolically.
The benefits of using symbolic evaluation of expressions follow:
z Unlike the numerical evaluation, with symbolics you can evaluate expressions without assigning
values to variables.
z Symbolic results can reveal relationships among variables that might not be apparent from
numerical results.
z Symbolic calculations are immune to the round-off errors that are inherent in numerical
calculations.

Note
Symbolic evaluation of functions is not supported inside solve blocks.

Examples
Following are some examples of symbolic calculation:

Comparing Symbolic with Arithmetic Results

Evaluating an expression symbolically can be more accurate than evaluating the same expression
with the equal sign. The difference is illustrated in the following two examples:

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About Symbolic Calculation Page 2 of 2

z Approximation of fraction addition:

The first result, which is evaluated with the equal sign, is a numerical approximation of the
result of adding the two fractions. The number of displayed digits is dependent on the current
setting of Display Precision. The second result, which is evaluated with the symbolic evaluation
operator, is exact. While the difference in this case is insignificant, in other problems, symbolic
results can be substantially more accurate than results evaluated with the equal sign.
z Approximation of built-in constants:

In PTC Mathcad, the constant is an approximation to and not its exact value. Therefore, the
numeric evaluation of sin() is using that approximation and the result is, in fact, its sin. That
isnt a bug in sin, its an artifact of what happens when you approximate a real number.

Units in Symbolic Calculation

In symbolic calculation, PTC Mathcad treats units as undefined variable names. It does not
combine units of the same quantity unless they are the same unit.

Related Links
About Symbolic Functions
Symbolic Evaluation Operator
Functions that Can Be Evaluated Both Numerically and Symbolically
To Insert Keywords and Modifiers
About Operators
About Units

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