Note that the complex expansion of the second term alone is several pages wide.
Not if you add "simplify" ;-)
Maple sure is the more capable symbolic package and I guess we all miss it in newer versions of Mathcad.
I guess that MC15 is NOT aware or at least not considering the ambiguity of the expression but simply isn't capable enough to simplify the equation.
It seems that both versions of Mathcad try to make the expression unique by implicitely setting the k in my calcs to zero. I am not aware of any mathematical convention for that (which may not mean much) but it sure makes sense and is done that way by most other math software as well. But using MC15's
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we should sure get a different result. Try it in MC11 (you can't use fully there) without and with "complex" and you get z resp. "no solution".
So it all depends on what definition of exponentiation we would agree on.
It may be considered as a similar behaviour as in
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where Mathcad defaults to the principal root (and that already often was a cause for confusion here in the forum). As sort of compromise Mathcad provides the root operator which defaults to real results.
The above example perfectly fits the discussion here if you consider that
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As the exponent here is real and rational obviously only three consecutive integer values for k make sense (MOIVRE), so we can chose 0,1,2:
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Mathcad again has chosen k=0 which in case of a rational exponent yields the principal root (value with the smallest positive argument).
So it's allaquestion of whichdefinitionone assumes and agrees on rather than which mathematician you ask Image may be NSFW.
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