Daniel Lemire writes:
> Out of 4 problems I submitted to the community (problems I took out of a
> Maple class I'm teaching), it turns out that Maxima can solve quite well
> 2 of them (through tricks I people gave me). Both Mathematica and Maple
> can solve all 4 problems. I only kept one problem (the exp one), because
> I'm convinced Maxima should be able to solve it.
You'll find the explanation in the documentation for the solve
command, DESCRIBE(SOLVE);
It says that SOLVE deals with equations of the form P(F(X))=C where P
is a polynomial (quadratic, cubic, etc) and F is an invertible
function. The equations exp(a*x)=C*exp(b*x) and a^x = b^x do not fall
into that class, hence it does not attempt to solve them.