poly_roots — MATH interp_poly op

Data kinds: signalroots

Call: import mathops; mathops.poly_roots(coeffs, real_only=False, imag_tol=1e-09) (or opsmath.get("poly_roots"))

Usage

All roots of a polynomial (coefficients highest-power-first) — complex included.

Roots are the eigenvalues of the companion matrix (`np.roots`); the

polynomial must have degree ≥ 1 and a non-zero leading coefficient

(fail-closed: a zero leading coefficient means the stated degree is a lie —

trim it explicitly rather than have it silently dropped).

Returns complex128, sorted by real part then imaginary part

(deterministic). Complex answers are honest answers: `x² + 1` really does

have roots `±i`, and hiding them would misreport the polynomial. Pass

`real_only=True` to keep only roots whose imaginary part is negligible

(`|imag| <= imag_tol * max(1, |root|)`) and get them back as a sorted

float64 array — possibly empty, which is the correct answer for

`x² + 1`.

Numerical note: root-finding conditioning degrades with degree and with

clustered roots (a double root moves ~`sqrt(eps)` under coefficient

noise — Wilkinson's classic analysis); treat high-degree roots as

approximate. HALCON: no root-finding tuple operator.

Family-wide input contract (fail-closed)

Every mathops op validates its input before computing (nothing slips through silently):

• **complex input raises ValueError** — coercing to float64 silently discards the imaginary part (numpy only emits a ComplexWarning and returns a plausible-looking wrong real number). State .real/.imag/abs() explicitly, or use complexops, which handles complex data.

• **masked arrays with masked elements raise ValueError** — the implicit conversion that peels off the mask and uses the raw values underneath is refused. Say explicitly whether to fill or to drop.

• **NaN/Inf raises ValueError on every input** (refused with the count stated — it propagates through the whole result).

Shapes are strict: 1-D and 2-D are never implicitly promoted or broadcast (a matrix in a vector slot, or a vector in a matrix slot, raises ValueError; reshape explicitly).

Size cap: ops that take a matrix, and the stat_histogram bins, raise ValueError beyond mathops.MAX_ELEMENTS (2^26 ≈ 67 million elements).

Detailed usage guide

math_metrology family guide

References (sample data, literature)

• Sample-data catalog (download URLs / licences) — 2-D uses skimage.data (BSD/public domain) plus synthetic images; 3-D lists download URLs for real data sources (Stanford, PDS, …).

• Operator provenance and references — the sources of the research/methods this op family came from.

• The canonical algorithm (author, year) and its uses are named in the family usage guide above.

Runnable examples (verified samples that actually call this op)

math_metrologypy -3.11 examples/math_metrology.py

Ops the type connects to (they accept roots as input)

Same category (interp_poly)

interp_linear · interp_cubic · poly_fit · poly_eval


*Provenance: mathops.py — MATH operator registry. This per-op note is generated by tools/opdocs.py md (do not hand-edit).*

© 2026 Kazufumi Furuse — Fullseye operator documentation. Licensed under Apache-2.0.