<HTML><BODY style="word-wrap: break-word; -khtml-nbsp-mode: space; -khtml-line-break: after-white-space; "><DIV><DIV>On Mar 13, 2006, at 4:43 PM, Jay Austad wrote:</DIV><BR class="Apple-interchange-newline"><BLOCKQUOTE type="cite"><P style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px"><FONT face="Helvetica" size="3" style="font: 12.0px Helvetica">I need to do some calculations on very large numbers, and bc won't <SPAN class="Apple-converted-space"> </SPAN></FONT></P> <P style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px"><FONT face="Helvetica" size="3" style="font: 12.0px Helvetica">handle it.<SPAN class="Apple-converted-space"> </SPAN>Does anyone know if a good tool which doesn't really have <SPAN class="Apple-converted-space"> </SPAN></FONT></P> <P style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px"><FONT face="Helvetica" size="3" style="font: 12.0px Helvetica">a limit on the size of numbers that it can deal with?<SPAN class="Apple-converted-space"> </SPAN>Something <SPAN class="Apple-converted-space"> </SPAN></FONT></P> <P style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px"><FONT face="Helvetica" size="3" style="font: 12.0px Helvetica">preferably free, I only really need to do one calculation to find out <SPAN class="Apple-converted-space"> </SPAN></FONT></P> <P style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px"><FONT face="Helvetica" size="3" style="font: 12.0px Helvetica">the probability of something, but it's fairly complex and has huge <SPAN class="Apple-converted-space"> </SPAN></FONT></P> <P style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px"><FONT face="Helvetica" size="3" style="font: 12.0px Helvetica">numbers in it.</FONT></P> </BLOCKQUOTE></DIV><DIV><BR class="khtml-block-placeholder"></DIV><DIV>Python handles large ints pretty well. You could just fire up the python interpreter (type 'python' in a shell) and start entering your numbers is regular mathematical notation.</DIV><DIV><BR class="khtml-block-placeholder"></DIV><DIV>-Tim</DIV><BR><DIV> <SPAN class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: separate; border-spacing: 0px 0px; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: auto; -khtml-text-decorations-in-effect: none; text-indent: 0px; -apple-text-size-adjust: auto; text-transform: none; orphans: 2; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; "><DIV style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">-- </DIV><DIV style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">Tim Wilson</DIV><DIV style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">Twin Cities, Minnesota, USA</DIV><DIV style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">Educational technology guy, Linux and OS X fan, Grad. student, Daddy</DIV><DIV style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">mailto: <A href="mailto:wilson@visi.com">wilson@visi.com</A><SPAN class="Apple-converted-space"> </SPAN> <SPAN class="Apple-converted-space"> </SPAN>aim: tis270<SPAN class="Apple-converted-space"> </SPAN> <SPAN class="Apple-converted-space"> </SPAN>blog: <A href="http://technosavvy.org">http://technosavvy.org</A></DIV><BR class="Apple-interchange-newline"></SPAN> </DIV><BR></BODY></HTML>