Nikos,
Thanks for your thorough response. Your reply leads me to believe that
1. I probably cannot solve my problem with Maxima, Mathematica, or any
other symbolic math problem, and 2. I should just solve it numerically.
But with regard to the desirability of a very large solution (many
pages): my goal is to obtain an efficient code for calculating the
behavior of a physical system for a variety of parameter values, each of
which can vary across time. Obtaining a hard-coded analytical result
(say, by exporting the formulae into C or Fortran) is, I believe, more
efficient than running a numerical solver. And one can learn something
just by looking at the symbolic result, however long and complicated it
may be.
Regards,
Neil
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______________________________________________________
Neil E. Klepeis, UC Berkeley, School of Public Health,
and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory,
Berkeley, CA USA. Voice: 831-768-9510