### Inverse Symbolic Calculator 2.0

05Feb08

For all you numerologists out there trying to explain the hierarchy of Yukawa couplings, you might enjoy playing with the Inverse Symbolic Calculator 2.0 (via Reddit some time ago).

The Inverse Symbolic Calculator (ISC) uses a combination of lookup tables and integer relation algorithms in order to associate with a user-defined, truncated decimal expansion (represented as a floating point expression) a closed form representation for the real number.

In other words, you give the decimal and the ISC gives you an expression (involving things like $e$ and $pi$) that evaluates to that number to the same precision.

The real geeks out there will test out the ISC with a real problem, what is the inverse symbolic expression for 42?

The Answer to Life, the Universe, and Everything.

That’s the honest-to-Witten verbatim output of the program. I think it passes the test with flying colors.

#### 3 Responses to “Inverse Symbolic Calculator 2.0”

1. 1 andy.s

That’s really impressive. I put in the value for the solution of cos(x) = x and it reproduced the expression (well pretty close).

I wonder – if you put in the masses of all particles, would it reproduce the Standard Model for you?

2. 2 robert

Is there a challenge here, to trip the inverse symbolic calculator up? The response to 42 was indeed impressive. Sadly, it failed to recognise

3.141592653589793238462643383279726619348

as

Log[262537412640768744]/Sqrt[163]

and came up with Pi (which to the same number of decimal places is

3.141592653589793238462643383279502884197)