On Sat, 1 Mar 2003, Stavros Macrakis wrote:
> And of course the general symbolic solution of a
> quartic is a huge mess. Maxima can calculate it (trust me, I did it),
> but the result is enormous and presumably useless. One way to approach
> it is to just take the resulting quartic and run radcan over it for a
> few days...
?!?!?! Did I read that correctly? Days? Um, this is a homework problem
for a class I'm taking, and it's due Wednesday :-)
A numeric solution is prefectly acceptable. I just thought that there
would be a fairly simple symbolic solution...
Seriously, is that sort of run time something I should expect? I suppose
I've been spoiled by the expectation of more-or-less instantaneous answers
from interactive programs, so when Maxima (or anything) just sits there, I
figure either I've done something wrong, or the program's broken.
I guess my next bunch of questions will be things like how can I tell if
Maxima is actually working on something vs spinning its wheels. Is there
a way to have it tell me something like "Hey, this is way complicated.
If you want an answer, come back in a week or so..."?
Thanks,
James