Weird behaviour with GroebnerBasis in v7

I came across some weird behaviour when using GroebnerBasis. In m1 below, I used a Greek letter as my variable and in m2, I used a Latin letter. Both of them have no rules associated with them. Why do I get vastly different answers depending on what variable I choose?

Image:

Copyable code:

Clear["Global`*"]
g = Module[{x}, 
    x /. Solve[
      z - x (1 - b - 
           b x ( (a (3 - 2 a (1 + x)))/(1 - 3 a x + 2 a^2 x^2))) == 0,
       x]][[3]];
m1 = First@GroebnerBasis[\[Kappa] - g, z]
m2 = First@GroebnerBasis[k - g, z]

EDIT:

As pointed out by belisarius, my usage of GroebnerBasis is not entirely correct as it requires a polynomial input, whereas mine is not. This error, introduced by a copy-pasta, went unnoticed until now, as I was getting the answer that I expected when I followed through with the rest of my code using m1 from above. However, I'm not fully convinced that it is an unreasonable usage. Consider the example below:

x = (-b+Sqrt[b^2-4 a c])/2a;
p = First@GroebnerBasis[k - x,{a,b,c}]; (*get relation or cover for Riemann surface*)
q = First@GroebnerBasis[{D[p,k] == 0, p == 0},{a,b开发者_如何学Python,c},k,
    MonomialOrder -> EliminationOrder]; 

Solve[q==0, b] (*get condition on b for double root or branch point*) 

{{b -> -2 Sqrt[a] Sqrt[c]}, {b -> 2 Sqrt[a] Sqrt[c]}}

which is correct. So my interpretation is that it is OK to use GroebnerBasis in such cases, but I'm not all too familiar with the deep theory behind it, so I could be completely wrong here.

_{P.S. I heard that if you mention GroebnerBasis three times in your post, Daniel Lichtblau will answer your question :)}

The bug that was shown by these examples will be fixed in version 9. Offhand I do not know how to evade it in versions 8 and prior. If I recall correctly it was caused by an intermediate numeric overflow in some code that was checking whether a symbolic polynomial coefficient might be zero.

For some purposes it might be suitable to specify more variables and possibly a non-default term order. Also clearing denominators can be helpful at least in cases where that is a valid thing to do. That said, I do not know if these tactics would help in this example.

I'll look some more at this code but probably not in the near future.

Daniel Lichtblau

This may be related to the fact that Mathematica does not try all variable orders in functions like Simplify. Here is an example:

ClearAll[a, b, c]
expr = (c^4 b^2)/(c^4 b^2 + a^4 b^2 + c^2 a^2 (1 - 2 b^2));
Simplify[expr]
Simplify[expr /. {a -> b, b -> a}]

   (b^2 c^4)/(a^4 b^2 + a^2 (1 - 2 b^2) c^2 + b^2 c^4)

   (a^2 c^4)/(b^2 c^2 + a^2 (b^2 - c^2)^2)

Adam Strzebonski explained that:

...one can try FullSimplify with all possible orderings of chosen variables. Of course, this multiplies the computation time by Factorial[Length[variables]]...