josdejong/mathjs

lgammaNumber incorrectly returns NaN for all n < 0

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#3,604 建立於 2025年11月27日

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 (6 留言) (0 反應) (0 負責人)JavaScript (13,832 star) (1,298 fork)batch import
bugcategory:numericalhelp wanted

描述

Describe the bug

lgammaNumber incorrectly returns NaN for all n < 0.

To Reproduce

  1. Call mathjs.log(mathjs.gamma(-1.5)) and get 0.8600470153764809.
  2. Call mathjs.lgamma(-1.5) and get NaN.
  3. See that the returned values are not equal.

Problematic code

https://github.com/josdejong/mathjs/blob/4bbe862bb553bd765685b46d977e8ee226e4abf0/src/plain/number/probability.js#L91-L92

Suggested solution

Change the code

return NaN

to

Math.log(Math.PI / Math.sin(Math.PI * n)) - lgammaNumber(1 - n)

It correctly returns NaN for $n \in (-2k-1, -2k)$ and positive values for $n \in (-2k, -2k+1)$ for $k \in ℕ$.

You can check it for -1.5 too: Math.log(Math.PI / Math.sin(Math.PI * -1.5)) - mathjs.lgamma(1 - -1.5) returns 0.8600470153764859, which is close to 0.8600470153764809.

You can also just remove this if statement, because the one below already handles the n < 0 case properly: https://github.com/josdejong/mathjs/blob/4bbe862bb553bd765685b46d977e8ee226e4abf0/src/plain/number/probability.js#L96-L100

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