pow(a,b,c) operator in python returns (a**b)%c . If I have values of b, c, and the result of this operation (res=pow(a,b,c)), how can I find the value of a?
Despite the statements in the comments this is not the discrete logarithm problem. This more closely resembles the RSA problem in which c is the product of two large primes, b is the encrypt exponent, and a is the unknown plaintext. I always like to make x the unknown variable you want to solve for, so you have y= xb mod c where y, b, and c are known, you want to solve for x. Solving it involves the same basic number theory as in RSA, namely you must compute z=b-1 mod λ(c), and then you can solve for x via x = yz mod c. λ is Carmichael's lambda function, but you can also use Euler's phi (totient) function instead. We have reduced the original problem to computing an inverse mod λ(c). This is easy to do if c is easy to factor or we already know the factorization of c, and hard otherwise. If c is small then brute-force is an acceptable technique and you can ignore all the complicated math.
Here is some code showing these steps:
import functools
import math
def egcd(a, b):
"""Extended gcd of a and b. Returns (d, x, y) such that
d = a*x + b*y where d is the greatest common divisor of a and b."""
x0, x1, y0, y1 = 1, 0, 0, 1
while b != 0:
q, a, b = a // b, b, a % b
x0, x1 = x1, x0 - q * x1
y0, y1 = y1, y0 - q * y1
return a, x0, y0
def inverse(a, n):
"""Returns the inverse x of a mod n, i.e. x*a = 1 mod n. Raises a
ZeroDivisionError if gcd(a,n) != 1."""
d, a_inv, n_inv = egcd(a, n)
if d != 1:
raise ZeroDivisionError('{} is not coprime to {}'.format(a, n))
else:
return a_inv % n
def lcm(*x):
"""
Returns the least common multiple of its arguments. At least two arguments must be
supplied.
:param x:
:return:
"""
if not x or len(x) < 2:
raise ValueError("at least two arguments must be supplied to lcm")
lcm_of_2 = lambda x, y: (x * y) // math.gcd(x, y)
return functools.reduce(lcm_of_2, x)
def carmichael_pp(p, e):
phi = pow(p, e - 1) * (p - 1)
if (p % 2 == 1) or (e >= 2):
return phi
else:
return phi // 2
def carmichael_lambda(pp):
"""
pp is a sequence representing the unique prime-power factorization of the
integer whose Carmichael function is to be computed.
:param pp: the prime-power factorization, a sequence of pairs (p,e) where p is prime and e>=1.
:return: Carmichael's function result
"""
return lcm(*[carmichael_pp(p, e) for p, e in pp])
a = 182989423414314437
b = 112388918933488834121
c = 128391911110189182102909037 * 256
y = pow(a, b, c)
lam = carmichael_lambda([(2,8), (128391911110189182102909037, 1)])
z = inverse(b, lam)
x = pow(y, z, c)
print(x)
The best you can do is something like this:
a = 12
b = 5
c = 125
def is_int(a):
return a - int(a) <= 1e-5
# ============= Without C ========== #
print("Process without c")
rslt = pow(a, b)
print("a**b:", rslt)
print("a:", pow(rslt, (1.0 / b)))
# ============= With C ========== #
print("\nProcess with c")
rslt = pow(a, b, c)
i = 0
while True:
a = pow(rslt + i*c, (1.0 / b))
if is_int(a):
break
else:
i += 1
print("a**b % c:", rslt)
print("a:", a)
You can never be sure that you have found the correct modulo value, it is the first value that is compatible with your settings. The algorithm is based on the fact that a, b and c are integers. If they are not you have no solution a likely combination that was the original one.
Outputs:
Process without c
a**b: 248832
a: 12.000000000000002
Process with c
a**b % c: 82
a: 12.000000000000002
Related
Using Python, I would like to implement a function that takes a natural number n as input and outputs a list of natural numbers [y1, y2, y3, ...] such that n + y1*y1 and n + y2*y2 and n + y3*y3 and so forth is again a square.
What I tried so far is to obtain one y-value using the following function:
def find_square(n:int) -> tuple[int, int]:
if n%2 == 1:
y = (n-1)//2
x = n+y*y
return (y,x)
return None
It works fine, eg. find_square(13689) gives me a correct solution y=6844. It would be great to have an algorithm that yields all possible y-values such as y=44 or y=156.
Simplest slow approach is of course for given N just to iterate all possible Y and check if N + Y^2 is square.
But there is a much faster approach using integer Factorization technique:
Lets notice that to solve equation N + Y^2 = X^2, that is to find all integer pairs (X, Y) for given fixed integer N, we can rewrite this equation to N = X^2 - Y^2 = (X + Y) * (X - Y) which follows from famous school formula of difference of squares.
Now lets rename two factors as A, B i.e. N = (X + Y) * (X - Y) = A * B, which means that X = (A + B) / 2 and Y = (A - B) / 2.
Notice that A and B should be of same odditiy, either both odd or both even, otherwise in last formulas above we can't have whole division by 2.
We will factorize N into all possible pairs of two factors (A, B) of same oddity. For fast factorization in code below I used simple to implement but yet quite fast algorithm Pollard Rho, also two extra algorithms were needed as a helper to Pollard Rho, one is Fermat Primality Test (which allows fast checking if number is probably prime) and second is Trial Division Factorization (which helps Pollard Rho to factor out small factors, which could cause Pollard Rho to fail).
Pollard Rho for composite number has time complexity O(N^(1/4)) which is very fast even for 64-bit numbers. Any faster factorization algorithm can be chosen if needed a bigger space to be searched. My fast algorithm time is dominated by speed of factorization, remaining part of algorithm is blazingly fast, just few iterations of loop with simple formulas.
If your N is a square itself (hence we know its root easily), then Pollard Rho can factor N even much faster, within O(N^(1/8)) time. Even for 128-bit numbers it means very small time, 2^16 operations, and I hope you're solving your task for less than 128 bit numbers.
If you want to process a range of possible N values then fastest way to factorize them is to use techniques similar to Sieve of Erathosthenes, using set of prime numbers, it allows to compute all factors for all N numbers within some range. Using Sieve of Erathosthenes for the case of range of Ns is much faster than factorizing each N with Pollard Rho.
After factoring N into pairs (A, B) we compute (X, Y) based on (A, B) by formulas above. And output resulting Y as a solution of fast algorithm.
Following code as an example is implemented in pure Python. Of course one can use Numba to speed it up, Numba usually gives 30-200 times speedup, for Python it achieves same speed as optimized C++. But I thought that main thing here is to implement fast algorithm, Numba optimizations can be done easily afterwards.
I added time measurement into following code. Although it is pure Python still my fast algorithm achieves 8500x times speedup compared to regular brute force approach for limit of 1 000 000.
You can change limit variable to tweak amount of searched space, or num_tests variable to tweak amount of different tests.
Following code implements both solutions - fast solution find_fast() described above plus very tiny brute force solution find_slow() which is very slow as it scans all possible candidates. This slow solution is only used to compare correctness in tests and compare speedup.
Code below uses nothing except few standard Python library modules, no external modules were used.
Try it online!
def find_slow(N):
import math
def is_square(x):
root = int(math.sqrt(float(x)) + 0.5)
return root * root == x, root
l = []
for y in range(N):
if is_square(N + y ** 2)[0]:
l.append(y)
return l
def find_fast(N):
import itertools, functools
Prod = lambda it: functools.reduce(lambda a, b: a * b, it, 1)
fs = factor(N)
mfs = {}
for e in fs:
mfs[e] = mfs.get(e, 0) + 1
fs = sorted(mfs.items())
del mfs
Ys = set()
for take_a in itertools.product(*[
(range(v + 1) if k != 2 else range(1, v)) for k, v in fs]):
A = Prod([p ** t for (p, _), t in zip(fs, take_a)])
B = N // A
assert A * B == N, (N, A, B, take_a)
if A < B:
continue
X = (A + B) // 2
Y = (A - B) // 2
assert N + Y ** 2 == X ** 2, (N, A, B, X, Y)
Ys.add(Y)
return sorted(Ys)
def trial_div_factor(n, limit = None):
# https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trial_division
fs = []
while n & 1 == 0:
fs.append(2)
n >>= 1
all_checked = False
for d in range(3, (limit or n) + 1, 2):
if d * d > n:
all_checked = True
break
while True:
q, r = divmod(n, d)
if r != 0:
break
fs.append(d)
n = q
if n > 1 and all_checked:
fs.append(n)
n = 1
return fs, n
def fermat_prp(n, trials = 32):
# https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermat_primality_test
import random
if n <= 16:
return n in (2, 3, 5, 7, 11, 13)
for i in range(trials):
if pow(random.randint(2, n - 2), n - 1, n) != 1:
return False
return True
def pollard_rho_factor(n):
# https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pollard%27s_rho_algorithm
import math, random
fs, n = trial_div_factor(n, 1 << 7)
if n <= 1:
return fs
if fermat_prp(n):
return sorted(fs + [n])
for itry in range(8):
failed = False
x = random.randint(2, n - 2)
for cycle in range(1, 1 << 60):
y = x
for i in range(1 << cycle):
x = (x * x + 1) % n
d = math.gcd(x - y, n)
if d == 1:
continue
if d == n:
failed = True
break
return sorted(fs + pollard_rho_factor(d) + pollard_rho_factor(n // d))
if failed:
break
assert False, f'Pollard Rho failed! n = {n}'
def factor(N):
import functools
Prod = lambda it: functools.reduce(lambda a, b: a * b, it, 1)
fs = pollard_rho_factor(N)
assert N == Prod(fs), (N, fs)
return sorted(fs)
def test():
import random, time
limit = 1 << 20
num_tests = 20
t0, t1 = 0, 0
for i in range(num_tests):
if (round(i / num_tests * 1000)) % 100 == 0 or i + 1 >= num_tests:
print(f'test {i}, ', end = '', flush = True)
N = random.randrange(limit)
tb = time.time()
r0 = find_slow(N)
t0 += time.time() - tb
tb = time.time()
r1 = find_fast(N)
t1 += time.time() - tb
assert r0 == r1, (N, r0, r1, t0, t1)
print(f'\nTime slow {t0:.05f} sec, fast {t1:.05f} sec, speedup {round(t0 / max(1e-6, t1))} times')
if __name__ == '__main__':
test()
Output:
test 0, test 2, test 4, test 6, test 8, test 10, test 12, test 14, test 16, test 18, test 19,
Time slow 26.28198 sec, fast 0.00301 sec, speedup 8732 times
For the easiest solution, you can try this:
import math
n=13689 #or we can ask user to input a square number.
for i in range(1,9999):
if math.sqrt(n+i**2).is_integer():
print(i)
So I stumbled upon this thread on here with this script and it returns a negative d value and my p and q values are both prime. Any reason for this? Possibly just a faulty script?
def egcd(a, b):
x,y, u,v = 0,1, 1,0
while a != 0:
q, r = b//a, b%a
m, n = x-u*q, y-v*q
b,a, x,y, u,v = a,r, u,v, m,n
gcd = b
return gcd, x, y
def main():
p = 153143042272527868798412612417204434156935146874282990942386694020462861918068684561281763577034706600608387699148071015194725533394126069826857182428660427818277378724977554365910231524827258160904493774748749088477328204812171935987088715261127321911849092207070653272176072509933245978935455542420691737433
q = 156408916769576372285319235535320446340733908943564048157238512311891352879208957302116527435165097143521156600690562005797819820759620198602417583539668686152735534648541252847927334505648478214810780526425005943955838623325525300844493280040860604499838598837599791480284496210333200247148213274376422459183
e = 65537
ct = 313988037963374298820978547334691775209030794488153797919908078268748481143989264914905339615142922814128844328634563572589348152033399603422391976806881268233227257794938078078328711322137471700521343697410517378556947578179313088971194144321604618116160929667545497531855177496472117286033893354292910116962836092382600437895778451279347150269487601855438439995904578842465409043702035314087803621608887259671021452664437398875243519136039772309162874333619819693154364159330510837267059503793075233800618970190874388025990206963764588045741047395830966876247164745591863323438401959588889139372816750244127256609
# compute n
n = p * q
# Compute phi(n)
phi = (p - 1) * (q - 1)
# Compute modular inverse of e
gcd, a, b = egcd(e, phi)
d = a
print( "n: " + str(d) );
# Decrypt ciphertext
pt = pow(ct,d,n)
print( "pt: " + str(pt) )
if __name__ == "__main__":
main()
This can happen, I'll explain why below, but for practical purposes you'll want to know how to fix it. The answer to that is to add phi to d and use that value instead: everything will work as RSA should.
So why does it happen? The algorithm computes the extended gcd. The result of egcd is a*e + b*phi = gcd, and in the case of RSA, we have gcd = 1 so a*e + b*phi = 1.
If you look at this equation modulo phi (which is the order of the multiplicative group), then a*e == 1 mod phi which is what you need to make RSA work. In fact, by the same congruence, you can add or subtract any multiple of phi to a and the congruence still holds.
Now look at the equation again: a*e + b*phi = 1. We know e and phi are positive integers. You can't have all positive integers in this equation or else no way would it add up to 1 (it would be much larger than 1). So that means either a or b is going to be negative. Sometimes it will be a that is negative, other times it will be b. When it is b, then your a comes out as you would expect: a positive integer that you then assign to the value d. But the other times, you get a negative value for a. We don't want that, so simply add phi to it and make that your value of d.
I want to find the zeros of a simple function for given parameters a, b, c. I have to use the Newton-Raphson method. The problem I obtain when I compile the code is that the x variable is not defined.
from scipy import optimize
def Zeros(a, b, c, u):
return optimize.newton(a*x**2+b*x+c, u, 2*ax+b, args=(a, b, c))
a, b, c are constants of the function f and u is the starting point. So with this function I should be able to obtain a zero by specifying a, b, c and u. For instance:
print Zeros(1, -1, 0, 0.8)
But I obtain "global name 'x' is not defined".
Why does that happen?
The way most programming languages work is that they use variables (the names a, b, c, u in your code) and functions (Zeros, for instance).
When calling a function, Python expects all of the "quantities" that are input to be defined. In your case, x does not exist.
The solution is to define a function that depends on x, for the function and its derivative
from scipy import optimize
def Zeros(a,b,c,u):
def f(x, a, b, c):
return a*x**2+b*x+c
def fprime(x, a, b, c):
return 2*a*x + b
return optimize.newton(f, u, fprime=fprime,args=(a,b,c))
print(Zeros(1,-1,0,0.8))
Crude way of doing it to see what's going on!
Define a function:
def f(x):
return x ** 6 / 6 - 3 * x ** 4 - 2 * x ** 3 / 3 + 27 * x ** 2 / 2 \
+ 18 * x - 30
Define the differential:
def d_f(x):
return x ** 5 - 12 * x ** 3 - 2 * x ** 2 + 27 * x + 18
Newton-Raphson:
x = 1
d = {'x': [x], 'f(x)': [f(x)], "f'(x)": [d_f(x)]}
for i in range(0, 40):
x = x - f(x) / d_f(x)
d['x'].append(x)
d['f(x)'].append(f(x))
d["f'(x)"].append(d_f(x))
df = pd.DataFrame(d, columns=['x', 'f(x)', "f'(x)"])
print(df)
Does some standard Python module contain a function to compute modular multiplicative inverse of a number, i.e. a number y = invmod(x, p) such that x*y == 1 (mod p)? Google doesn't seem to give any good hints on this.
Of course, one can come up with home-brewed 10-liner of extended Euclidean algorithm, but why reinvent the wheel.
For example, Java's BigInteger has modInverse method. Doesn't Python have something similar?
Python 3.8+
y = pow(x, -1, p)
Python 3.7 and earlier
Maybe someone will find this useful (from wikibooks):
def egcd(a, b):
if a == 0:
return (b, 0, 1)
else:
g, y, x = egcd(b % a, a)
return (g, x - (b // a) * y, y)
def modinv(a, m):
g, x, y = egcd(a, m)
if g != 1:
raise Exception('modular inverse does not exist')
else:
return x % m
If your modulus is prime (you call it p) then you may simply compute:
y = x**(p-2) mod p # Pseudocode
Or in Python proper:
y = pow(x, p-2, p)
Here is someone who has implemented some number theory capabilities in Python: http://www.math.umbc.edu/~campbell/Computers/Python/numbthy.html
Here is an example done at the prompt:
m = 1000000007
x = 1234567
y = pow(x,m-2,m)
y
989145189L
x*y
1221166008548163L
x*y % m
1L
You might also want to look at the gmpy module. It is an interface between Python and the GMP multiple-precision library. gmpy provides an invert function that does exactly what you need:
>>> import gmpy
>>> gmpy.invert(1234567, 1000000007)
mpz(989145189)
Updated answer
As noted by #hyh , the gmpy.invert() returns 0 if the inverse does not exist. That matches the behavior of GMP's mpz_invert() function. gmpy.divm(a, b, m) provides a general solution to a=bx (mod m).
>>> gmpy.divm(1, 1234567, 1000000007)
mpz(989145189)
>>> gmpy.divm(1, 0, 5)
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
ZeroDivisionError: not invertible
>>> gmpy.divm(1, 4, 8)
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
ZeroDivisionError: not invertible
>>> gmpy.divm(1, 4, 9)
mpz(7)
divm() will return a solution when gcd(b,m) == 1 and raises an exception when the multiplicative inverse does not exist.
Disclaimer: I'm the current maintainer of the gmpy library.
Updated answer 2
gmpy2 now properly raises an exception when the inverse does not exists:
>>> import gmpy2
>>> gmpy2.invert(0,5)
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
ZeroDivisionError: invert() no inverse exists
As of 3.8 pythons pow() function can take a modulus and a negative integer. See here. Their case for how to use it is
>>> pow(38, -1, 97)
23
>>> 23 * 38 % 97 == 1
True
Here is a one-liner for CodeFights; it is one of the shortest solutions:
MMI = lambda A, n,s=1,t=0,N=0: (n < 2 and t%N or MMI(n, A%n, t, s-A//n*t, N or n),-1)[n<1]
It will return -1 if A has no multiplicative inverse in n.
Usage:
MMI(23, 99) # returns 56
MMI(18, 24) # return -1
The solution uses the Extended Euclidean Algorithm.
Sympy, a python module for symbolic mathematics, has a built-in modular inverse function if you don't want to implement your own (or if you're using Sympy already):
from sympy import mod_inverse
mod_inverse(11, 35) # returns 16
mod_inverse(15, 35) # raises ValueError: 'inverse of 15 (mod 35) does not exist'
This doesn't seem to be documented on the Sympy website, but here's the docstring: Sympy mod_inverse docstring on Github
Here is a concise 1-liner that does it, without using any external libraries.
# Given 0<a<b, returns the unique c such that 0<c<b and a*c == gcd(a,b) (mod b).
# In particular, if a,b are relatively prime, returns the inverse of a modulo b.
def invmod(a,b): return 0 if a==0 else 1 if b%a==0 else b - invmod(b%a,a)*b//a
Note that this is really just egcd, streamlined to return only the single coefficient of interest.
I try different solutions from this thread and in the end I use this one:
def egcd(a, b):
lastremainder, remainder = abs(a), abs(b)
x, lastx, y, lasty = 0, 1, 1, 0
while remainder:
lastremainder, (quotient, remainder) = remainder, divmod(lastremainder, remainder)
x, lastx = lastx - quotient*x, x
y, lasty = lasty - quotient*y, y
return lastremainder, lastx * (-1 if a < 0 else 1), lasty * (-1 if b < 0 else 1)
def modinv(a, m):
g, x, y = self.egcd(a, m)
if g != 1:
raise ValueError('modinv for {} does not exist'.format(a))
return x % m
Modular_inverse in Python
Here is my code, it might be sloppy but it seems to work for me anyway.
# a is the number you want the inverse for
# b is the modulus
def mod_inverse(a, b):
r = -1
B = b
A = a
eq_set = []
full_set = []
mod_set = []
#euclid's algorithm
while r!=1 and r!=0:
r = b%a
q = b//a
eq_set = [r, b, a, q*-1]
b = a
a = r
full_set.append(eq_set)
for i in range(0, 4):
mod_set.append(full_set[-1][i])
mod_set.insert(2, 1)
counter = 0
#extended euclid's algorithm
for i in range(1, len(full_set)):
if counter%2 == 0:
mod_set[2] = full_set[-1*(i+1)][3]*mod_set[4]+mod_set[2]
mod_set[3] = full_set[-1*(i+1)][1]
elif counter%2 != 0:
mod_set[4] = full_set[-1*(i+1)][3]*mod_set[2]+mod_set[4]
mod_set[1] = full_set[-1*(i+1)][1]
counter += 1
if mod_set[3] == B:
return mod_set[2]%B
return mod_set[4]%B
The code above will not run in python3 and is less efficient compared to the GCD variants. However, this code is very transparent. It triggered me to create a more compact version:
def imod(a, n):
c = 1
while (c % a > 0):
c += n
return c // a
from the cpython implementation source code:
def invmod(a, n):
b, c = 1, 0
while n:
q, r = divmod(a, n)
a, b, c, n = n, c, b - q*c, r
# at this point a is the gcd of the original inputs
if a == 1:
return b
raise ValueError("Not invertible")
according to the comment above this code, it can return small negative values, so you could potentially check if negative and add n when negative before returning b.
To figure out the modular multiplicative inverse I recommend using the Extended Euclidean Algorithm like this:
def multiplicative_inverse(a, b):
origA = a
X = 0
prevX = 1
Y = 1
prevY = 0
while b != 0:
temp = b
quotient = a/b
b = a%b
a = temp
temp = X
a = prevX - quotient * X
prevX = temp
temp = Y
Y = prevY - quotient * Y
prevY = temp
return origA + prevY
Well, here's a function in C which you can easily convert to python. In the below c function extended euclidian algorithm is used to calculate inverse mod.
int imod(int a,int n){
int c,i=1;
while(1){
c = n * i + 1;
if(c%a==0){
c = c/a;
break;
}
i++;
}
return c;}
Translates to Python Function
def imod(a,n):
i=1
while True:
c = n * i + 1;
if(c%a==0):
c = c/a
break;
i = i+1
return c
Reference to the above C function is taken from the following link C program to find Modular Multiplicative Inverse of two Relatively Prime Numbers
I have the following assignment: Si(x) = the integral from 0 to x of sin(t)/t. Write a python code that takes the parameter x and returns the sine integral for that x.
I cant figure out how to move forward with my code to make it work. Can anyone help me?
I get this error:
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "C:\Users\krist_000\Desktop\integration_simpson.py", line 37, in <module>
print(simpsons_rule( f_of_t, 2, b, N))
File "C:\Users\krist_000\Desktop\integration_simpson.py", line 18, in simpsons_rule
I += f(t) + (2.0*f(t+h) )
UnboundLocalError: local variable 't' referenced before assignment
[Finished in 0.1s with exit code 1]
Here is my code:
def simpsons_rule( f, x, b, N):
*""" Implements simpsons_rule
f(t) - function to integrate
x - start point
b - end point
N - number of intervals, must be even.
"""*
if N & 1:
print ("Error: N is not a even number.")
return 0.0
h = (b - x) / N
I = 0.0
x = float(x)
for i in range(0, N/2):
I += f(t) + (2.0*f(t+h) )
t += 2*h
I = (2.0 * I) - f(x) + f(b)
I = h * I / 3.0
return I
import math
def f_of_t(t):
return (math.sin(t)) / t
N = 1000
b = 0.0
print(simpsons_rule( f_of_t, 2, b, N))
PyCharm found a few problems with your code. Your code compiles and runs now. I get the correct answer, according to Wolfram Alpha:
F:\Tools\python-2.7.3\python.exe F:/Projects/Python/udacity/udacity/simpsons.py
1.6054029768
Process finished with exit code 0
See if this works better for you. You would do well to study the changes I made and understand why I made them:
def simpsons_rule(f, a, b, n):
"""
Implements simpsons_rule
:param f: function to integrate
:param a: start point
:param b: end point
:param n: number of intervals, must be even.
:return: integral of the function
"""
if n & 1:
print ("Error: n is not a even number.")
return 0.0
h = float(b - a) / n
integral = 0.0
x = float(a)
for i in range(0, n / 2):
integral += f(x) + (2.0 * f(x + h))
x += 2 * h
integral = (2.0 * integral) - f(a) + f(b)
integral = h * integral / 3.0
return integral
import math
def f_of_t(t):
# Note: guard against singular behavior at t = 0.
# L'Hospital says value should be 1.0. NAN if you don't check.
if x == 0:
return 1.0
else:
return (math.sin(t)) / t
n = 10000
a = 0
b = 2
print(simpsons_rule(f_of_t, a, b, n))