# How to specify expressions and assumptions that contain summations?

Posted 2 months ago
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 HI, I'd like to simplify (or prove) some symbolic expressions that include summations. I've gotten close, but no cigar. How is this done?
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Posted 2 months ago
 Richard, to get rid of the error message you should use Indexed instead of Part: postulate = Sum[Abs[Indexed[x, {i}] - Indexed[y, {i}]], {i, 1, p}]/Sum[Max[Indexed[x, {i}], Indexed[y, {i}]], {i, 1, p}] == 1 - Sum[Min[Indexed[x, {i}], Indexed[y, {i}]], {i, 1, p}]/(Sum[Indexed[x, {i}], {i, 1, p}] + Sum[Indexed[y, {i}], {i, 1, p}] - Sum[Min[Indexed[x, {i}], Indexed[y, {i}]], {i, 1, p}]) But I do not know how to prove this remarkable formula, unfortunately. Empirical checks always evaluate to True, e.g.: dim = 50; postulate /. {p -> dim, x -> RandomInteger[{-5, 5}, dim], y -> RandomInteger[{-5, 5}, dim]} ... well, not very helpful, I know!
Posted 2 months ago
 Henrik, thank you. I'll give it a try later on today CA time. I've set up an alternate kernel for long computations ... we'll see what happens.Also thank you for your example demonstrating substitution of values in formulas. I'd forgotten about that and it will come in handy, I'm sure.
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Posted 2 months ago
 I think I see what you are getting at and it is interesting use. However my intuition is that proving the below is the same as proving one term of the sums above. Therefore I suggest to prove in two steps. One step such as the below, and another step to prove that any step is not unique. In: Abs[x - y]/Max[x, y] + Min[x, y]/(x + y - Min[x, y]) // FullSimplify Out: 1 I'm not familiar with a way to move your statement as x[[i]] (a random sequence of Z) and for Simplify[] to apply rules to it within a Sum[]. I feel the statistical library could do it. I believe it can be proven by Probability as "the sum of two complementary events equals 1", that is, P(E) + P(E') = 1, where each P is N(E)/N(S) in which E is the count of simple events and S is the total subspace.
Posted 2 months ago
 The origin of this postulate is an empirical analysis of 2+ dozen distance metrics on a large sample of data. I was looking for common subsequences among the 400 combinations and was very surprised to find two equivalent whole sequences. There are algebraists who solve this sort of thing on the back of a napkin but I'm not one of them, so I thought to give Mathematica a try.
Posted 2 months ago
 Ok, here - I guess/hope - comes a proof. If this turns out to be correct and useful, then all credits have to be given to John Hendrickson, because his remark gave me the crucial hint.The postulate looks like this:Using Johns relation we can rewrite the denominator of right hand side to $$x+y-\text{Min}(x,y) = \frac{\text{Min}(x,y) \text{Max}(x,y)}{\text{Max}(x,y)-\text{Abs}(x-y)}$$and here the right hand side simplifies to $\text{Max}(x,y)$: FullSimplify[(Min[x, y] Max[x, y]/(Max[x, y] - Abs[x - y])) == Max[x, y], {x, y} \[Element] Reals] so now the postulate looks like so:and what is left to do is simply to show that FullSimplify[Max[x, y] - Min[x, y] == Abs[x - y], {x, y} \[Element] Reals] which evaluates to True.
Posted 2 months ago
Posted 2 months ago
 Richard - please - did I give not a valid general proof?
Posted 2 months ago
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