im calculating a geometric progression and need to know how to display is it ar0+ar1+ar2+...+arn
this is the code i have:

x=5;
syms x
for i=1:19
    x=x+5*(1/2)^i
end

but i want the display to show 5+5/2+15/4 and so on, i just need to know how to display it in this kind of format.

"Kevin " <kevin_stanza@yahoo.co.uk> wrote in message 
news:hoagr3$l5h$1@fred.mathworks.com...
> im calculating a geometric progression and need to know how to display is 
> it ar0+ar1+ar2+...+arn
> this is the code i have:
>
> x=5;
> syms x

This just overwrote the value of x that you assigned previously.  If you 
really want x to be the symbolic value 5:

x = sym(5);

> for i=1:19
>    x=x+5*(1/2)^i
> end
>
> but i want the display to show 5+5/2+15/4 and so on, i just need to know 
> how to display it in this kind of format.

FPRINTF.

x = sym(5);
two = sym(2);
fprintf('5');
for k = 1:19
    added = two^k;
    x = x+5/added;
    fprintf('+5/%s', char(added));
end
fprintf('\n');

Note that x will not contain the individual terms; it will instead contain 
the sum of the terms.  If you want to store the individual terms, create a 
sym array and store each term in an element, then sum them up after the loop 
is finished.

-- 
Steve Lord
slord@mathworks.com
comp.soft-sys.matlab (CSSM) FAQ: http://matlabwiki.mathworks.com/MATLAB_FAQ