I ask because I'm a prof. at Acadia U. and we are currently teaching
calculus using Maple. I'm trying to see if Maxima could be used instead.
So I've tested some problems we asked the students to solve using Maple.
It would seem like Maxima fails at solving all of them!!!!
It would seem that you argument is "Maxima assumes everything to be
complex numbers and so your problem is too hard". Fine. Can I tell
Maxima to consider everything in terms of real numbers??? (My students
don't even know what a complex number is... let alone DeMoivre's
formula!!!!!!!!!!)
I don't know. Looks to me like...
solve(exp(a*x)= C*exp(b*x),x);
should give me
x = log(C)/(a-b) or something like this (I might be getting the sign
wrong). Of course, if I allow a and b to be complex... or x to be
complex... but why would I want to do this?
How is that non trivial? All you have to do is apply the log on both
sides of the equation.
Plus...
solve(a^x=b^x,x);
should give me x = 0. Sure, there might be many solutions... but that's
one of them, for sure!
solve(log(a*x)=C*log(b*x),x);
should give me x = ((b^c)/a)^(1/c) or at least some kind of answer...
just take "exp(" on both sides and solve! (I might have my answer wrong
btw).
And so on...
I mean, beside solving polynomial equations, Maxima doesn't seem to do
much (in terms of solving!).
Also, is there a way to make sure the doc. is available even when I'm
not connected to a network? Can't I see the doc. from maxima locally?
Richard Fateman wrote:
> Maybe since there are an infinite number of solutions, your
> equations are not so elementary?
> I assume "some" solution could be found by further
> programming, but the multiplicities
> would be infinite. Note that exp(x+4*%pi*%i) = exp(x).
> RJF
>
> Daniel Lemire wrote:
>
>>Good day,
>>
>>I think the "solve" function is broken. I just installed Maxima and
>>tried solving a few elementary equations. In all cases but the very,
>>very elementary ones, Maxima is no good, it seems. (See below.)
>>
>>What am I missing? Surely, Maxima can do this?
>>
>>[lemire@romeo lemire]$ maxima
>>GCL (GNU Common Lisp) Version(2.4.0) Wed May 9 12:02:00 CDT 2001
>>Licensed under GNU Library General Public License
>>Contains Enhancements by W. Schelter
>>Maxima 5.6 Wed May 9 12:01:49 CDT 2001 (with enhancements by W. Schelter).
>>Licensed under the GNU Public License (see file COPYING)
>>(C1) solve(exp(a*x)= C*exp(b*x),x);
>>
>> a x
>> b x %E
>>(D1) [%E = -----]
>> C
>>(C2) solve(log(a*x)=C*log(b*x),x);
>>
>> LOG(a x)
>>(D2) [LOG(b x) = --------]
>> C
>>(C3) solve(a^x=b^x,x);
>>
>> x x
>>(D3) [b = a ]
>>(C4) solve(m*x+b=y,x);
>>
>> y - b
>>(D4) [x = -----]
>> m
>>(C5)
>>--
>>Daniel Lemire, Ph.D.
>>
>>http://www.ondelette.com/
>>
>>_______________________________________________
>>Maxima mailing list
>>Maxima@www.math.utexas.edu
>>http://www.math.utexas.edu/mailman/listinfo/maxima
>>
>
--
Daniel Lemire, Ph.D.
http://www.ondelette.com/