@Joe Riel That's an astute observation, Joe, that ln(1.0) = ln(1.00). I missed that, and I should've used add.

This issue of when `+` is more efficient than add is quite complex, but my tests show that `+`(L[]) is faster than add(x, x= L); so I default to using `+` in that situation. The map is a confounding factor: I don't know whether `+`(map(f,L)[]) is faster than add(f(x), x= L), but I'd guess that the add is faster.

NN is an expression, but not an equation, so it can't be solved. Did you intend for it to be equated to 0?

Using Maple 17, I have no trouble evaluating in the loop. I get,

                       0.074999999990753
                       0.149262458185785
                       0.187942405730181
                       0.198418374384841
                       0.199889286003792
                       0.199995945427242
                       0.199999923257023
                       0.199999999255143
                       0.199999999996312
                       0.199999999999991
                       0.200000000000000
                              0.2
                              0.2
                              0.2
                              0.2
                       0.200000000000000
                       0.199999999999991
                       0.199999999996312
                       0.199999999255143
                       0.199999923257023
                       0.199995945427242
                       0.199889286003792
                       0.198418374384841
                       0.187942405730181
                       0.149262458185785
                       0.074999999990753

What Maple are you using?

@brian bovril 

Yes and yes, it seems complicated.

@brian bovril 

I don't know of a good way to pick the cut-off value for the variation. (I hestitate to call the quantity "variance" as that has a well-defined mathematical meaning.) If you had a large number of such sets of 16 numbers to do, you might be able to figure it out from a random sample of those.

Your method for measuring the variation is not valid because it depends on the order of the blocks within the partition. Note that the two values of P that you got are essentially the same except for the order and the presence of decimal points. Hence the variation should measure the same. You only take four pairwise differences, when there are actually six (binomial(4,2)=6) pairs to consider. In the code below, I have a corrected version of this type variation measure. It uses combinat:-choose to iterate over all pairs of blocks.

I realized thatI could use the property that the ln of a product is the sum of the lns to speed up my program. Now I only need to take the ln of each number once.

You should see if you have a Maple compiler. Just take out the phrase compile= false from the code below. If you don't get a error message, then you have the compiler. This leads to about a 25% decrease in the time for Iterator:-SetPartitions.

Download Equal_products.mw

@Gauss 

LinearAlgebra:-ColumnSpace(A) gives you a basis for the image of A.

@Markiyan Hirnyk I am obtaining some understanding of this matter from the textbook that the OP is using: Modern Computer Algebra by Joachim von zur Gathen and Jurgen Gerhard. If you can access this book, I direct your attention to section 14.6 "Squarefree factorization". Some relevant quotes:

We will show how to reduce the problem of factoring arbitrary polynomials to that of factoring squarefree polynomials. Polynomial factorization software usually performs this reduction first; it is not quite clear when the (small) advantage one gains outweighs the (small) cost of the reduction.

And

The squarefree decomposition provides more information than the squarefree part. For a nonconstant monic polynomial f \in F[x], this is the unique sequence of monic squarefree pairwise coprime polynomials (g[1], ..., g[m]) with f = product(g[k]^k, k= 1..m) and g[m] <> 1. For example, the squarefree decomposition of x^4*(x+1)^2*(x-1)^2*(x^2+1)^2*(x^2+x+1) \in Q[x] is (x^2+x+1, x^4-1, 1, x). Thus g[i] is the product of those monic irreducible polynomials that divide f exactly i times.

@Axel Vogt Your files did not attach properly. This is a bug in MaplePrimes.

@Adri van der Meer 

For me, on Windows, currentdir() returns the currently active directory, but it doesn't return the directory of the current worksheet.

@candy898 So you are in fact using the book Modern Computer Algebra by Joachim von zur Gathen and Jurgen Gerhard. Why didn't you say so?

@Markiyan Hirnyk Here's an example where sqrfree and factor give different results:

f:= expand((x^2+x+1)*(x^3+x^2+x+1));
sqrfree(f);
factor(f);

@Markiyan Hirnyk No. If I could base them, I wouldn't have used the words "perhaps" and "suspect."

@Markiyan Hirnyk Good question. There is no difference in these cases, nor do I know of a case where there is a difference. There is perhaps a difference for some complicated polynomials. By the definition, the given factors need not be irreducible, they simply are forbidden to have repeated factors. There is an analogous situation with isqrfree and ifactors. I suspect that the reason that these commands exist is that the square-free factorization is much easier to compute than the full factorization.

@sm3scott If you use " ", then you have quotes within quotes. Try using backquotes instead: ` `.

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