Good day,
I'm not sure "solve(log(lhs(%))=log(rhs(%)),x);" seems like an
interesting thing to do. Isn't that fairly complicated? Sure, you end up
getting the answer... but it is probably longer than working out the
problem on some scrap paper.
Ok, well, let's suppose it is ok. Now, let me have a look at the SCSIMP
command... let's take an obvious case...
(C1) SCSIMP(a*(sin(x))^2 +a*(cos(x))^2 );
2 2
(D1) a SIN (x) + a COS (x)
Again, it would seem like Maxima fails miserably... and I'm not even
taking a very difficult case!
What gives? Is Maxima really useless? (And I don't want that to be true!
I've read somewhere that someone spent 15 years on this piece of
software!!!)
This is really depressing... I was about to switch to Maxima... I could
do easily with a crappy interface, a few bugs, some missing features...
but it seems to me (please prove me wrong) that the symbolic features
are totally useless for any serious applications.
Sure, you can draw plots, but so can gnuplot. Sure you can do some
calculations, but then so can gnuplot... So far, I haven't found
anything that gnuplot couldn't do better.
I really wish I could throw away Maple, Mathcad and all that... but it
seems like it is nowhere near happening!
David Holmgren wrote:
> Hi - Here's a way to get SOLVE to do the exponential problem:
> exp(a*x)=C*exp(b*x);
> solve(log(lhs(%))=log(rhs(%)),x);
> which gives the one element list
> LOG(C)
> [x = - ------ ]
> b - a
>
> Dave Holmgren
>
--
Daniel Lemire, Ph.D.
http://www.ondelette.com/