Newbie: problem solving basic equations



>>>>> "Daniel" == Daniel Lemire <lemire@ondelette.com> writes:

    Daniel> What gives? Is Maxima really useless? (And I don't want that to be
    Daniel> true! I've read somewhere that someone spent 15 years on this piece of
    Daniel> software!!!)

15 years of part time work by one person versus the hundreds
(thousands?) for the commercial systems.

    Daniel> Sure, you can draw plots, but so can gnuplot. Sure you can do some
    Daniel> calculations, but then so can gnuplot... So far, I haven't found
    Daniel> anything that gnuplot couldn't do better.

Gnuplot can't tell me that for p > 0

                2
     INF       t
    /        - --- - p t
    [  3/4     2 b
    I t    %E            dt
    ]
    /
     0

is

                      2                                2
                   b p                              b p
                   ----  8 SQRT(%PI) %M            (----)
         3   7/8    4                  - 5/8, - 1/4  2
 3 GAMMA(-) b    %E     (--------------------------------
         4                    5/8       3   1/4
                           3 2    GAMMA(-) b    SQRT(p)
                                        8

                                                                      2
                                        3/8                        b p
                                       2    SQRT(%PI) %M          (----)
                                                        - 5/8, 1/4  2
                                     - ---------------------------------)/4
                                                   7   1/4
                                             GAMMA(-) b    SQRT(p)
                                                   8

(Actually, I'm not sure I could do that either, expect by looking in a
table of integrals.)

    Daniel> I really wish I could throw away Maple, Mathcad and all that... but it
    Daniel> seems like it is nowhere near happening!

Then don't throw them away.  You have something that works.  Why
switch?

Ray