Re: What should "solving" really mean, some literature.
Subject: Re: What should "solving" really mean, some literature.
From: Daniel Lemire
Date: Thu, 04 Oct 2001 15:35:32 -0300
Good day,
> I'm not sure I mentioned it previously, but the commercial Macsyma
> solves this without any fuss, providing [x=-log(c)/(b-a)].
>
> Of course if C= -1, then Macsyma provides i*pi/(b-a), but
> if I understand Daniel's preferences, he would like it to
> return "no solutions exist" in this case.
Ideally, Richard, I'd like Maxima to allow be to switch "Complex ON" or
"Complex OFF".
This being said, if it is too hard, I would rather have the complex
solutions given to me than nothing. My preference though would be to be
able to turn complex numbers on or off.
Why? Because I don't want maxima to find an answer to "exp(x) = -1". I
want Maxima to say that there are no real solutions. Then, if I enable
complex numbers, it could give me something else.
I'm not algebra specialist, but it seems to me that a good computer
algebra system should be able to work with various rings: complex,
real... and more?
Surely, we cannot expect Maxima to support all rings, but complex and
reals seem like two reasonable sets to support!
Am I crazy in requesting such a feature???
--
Daniel Lemire, Ph.D.
http://www.ondelette.com