Is there a scaled complementary error function in python available?

Question

In matlab there is a special function which is not available in any of the collections for the Python I know (numpy, scipy, mpmath, ...).

Probably there are other p

Answer 1

I don't know that any of the standard sources include that function, but you can implement it in straightforward fashion, at least if you use mpmath and aren't too worried about performance:

import math
import mpmath

def erfcx(x):
    return math.exp(x**2) * math.erfc(x)

def erfcx_mp(x):
    return mpmath.exp(x**2) * mpmath.erfc(x)

where = mpmath.linspace(1, 50, 10) + mpmath.linspace(100, 1000, 5)
for x in where:
    try:
        std = erfcx(x)
    except OverflowError:
        std = None
    new = erfcx_mp(x)
    approx = (1/(x*mpmath.pi**0.5))
    print x, std, new, (new-approx)/approx 

produces

1.0 0.427583576156 0.427583576155807 -0.242127843858688
6.44444444444444 0.0865286153111 0.0865286153111425 -0.0116285899486798
11.8888888888889 0.0472890800456 0.0472890800455829 -0.00350053472385845
17.3333333333333 0.032495498521 0.0324954985209682 -0.00165596082986796
22.7777777777778 0.024745497 0.0247454970000106 -0.000960939188986022
28.2222222222222 None 0.0199784436993529 -0.000626572735073611
33.6666666666667 None 0.0167507236463156 -0.000440550710337029
39.1111111111111 None 0.0144205913280408 -0.000326545959369654
44.5555555555556 None 0.0126594222570918 -0.00025167403795913
50.0 None 0.0112815362653238 -0.000199880119832415
100.0 None 0.00564161378298943 -4.99925018743586e-5
325.0 None 0.00173595973189465 -4.73366058776083e-6
550.0 None 0.00102579754728657 -1.6528843659911e-6
775.0 None 0.000727985953393782 -8.32464102161289e-7
1000.0 None 0.000564189301453388 -4.9999925011689e-7

And it behaves as it should even when the math.* routines overflow. mpmath's interval support isn't quite up to the task (without some hackery I'm too lazy to do), but for this I'm pretty sure mpfs will suffice, as erfcx is simply the product of two things mpmath can compute nicely.