Greetings, and a question about sequences.

Hello, everyone.  I appreciate everyone's responses.  Since there are
several related posts I would like to respond to, I included them
below.

On Fri, Aug 29, 2003 at 07:29:49AM -0400, steve@horne.homelinux.net wrote:
> There are very large differences betrween matlab & maxima.  Using
> matlab for a calculus course seems a bit odd.

Having used Matlab a little now, I agree that it seems odd to use it
for calculus.  In fact, Maxima was much easier to use to me for that
purpose than Matlab.  (I don't have a copy of Matlab, but it is
installed in the library at the college.)  This college is using
Matlab because the instructor is following the exact course as offered
at Virginia Tech--the community college course is 100% compatible, but
cheaper. :)  VA Tech uses Matlab because this calculus course is
designed primarily for engineers and those in the physical sciences
and Matlab is used a lot in industry.  At least that is what I
understood the instructor to say.

> I'd suggest you look at Octave too.  It uses exactly the same syntax
> as Matlab -- attempts to be a clone.  http://www.octave.org/

Thanks, I'll look into Octave.  I installed Octave when I installed
Redhat because the description looked interesting, but I never really
looked into it.
 
> I personally use scilab http://www-rocq.inria.fr/scilab/ which does
> everything Matlab does, but the syntax is slightly different.

I played with Scilab a little in the past.  I was mesmorized by the
demos...especially the wiggle-wagon backing demo.  I'll look into it
again, too.

On Fri, Aug 29, 2003 at 04:56:25PM +0400, Andrei Zorine wrote:
> Hello!
> yes, there are many beautiful programs out there. But this man was 
> interested in Maxima, and in using special (possibly, user-defined) 
> operators in particular. From this point on view, your message was 
> totally useless! Responses like this don't attract new users of Maxima!.

Andrei,

I appreciate your thought here, and it is true that I didn't get my
specific question about Maxima answered (which I am still interested
in).  However, I do appreciate Steve's pointing me in another
direction.  If I am trying to use a hammer to drive a screw, I don't
mind someone handing me a screwdriver instead of telling me how to get
the hammer to twist as it strikes the screw. :-)

On Fri, Aug 29, 2003 at 12:28:09PM -0700, Richard Fateman wrote:
> I suspect this may even be a cultural difference, but
> (speaking as a professor in an American university) if a
> student comes to me and asks "Should I do A or B?"
> and both A and B are very bad ideas, I feel it is
> perfectly correct to ask "Why are you thinking of doing
> A or B, which are both bad ideas? What is your objective?
> Have you considered a (much better) alternative C to
> achieve that objective?"

Richard,

That's a good point, and I agree.  I didn't understand the vast
differences between Maxima and Matlab, and it certainly looks like
Octave would be a more viable alternative.  I'm glad that I was
pointed in that direction.  (Don't get me wrong--I'm not chunking
Maxima.  I was interested in Maxima before starting the calc course,
and I still am.)

Because I did have a specific question about Maxima, I also see
Andrei's point.  I would still like to know if there is a simple
solution to the problem of filling a list with an arithmetic sequence
just for the sake of it.

On Fri, Aug 29, 2003 at 02:01:50PM +0200, Miquel Cabanas wrote:
> Maxima is a great tool, but if Matlab compatibility is a must then
> I'd suggest to go for Octave (http://www.octave.org). Nonetheless,
> note that Octave is meant for numerical computations rather than for
> symbolic work, though it has an interface to Gina which allows for
> some symbolic calculus (http://octave.sf.net). Probably, the best
> advise is to combine the use of both Maxima and Octave.

The symbolic part is my only concern about Octave.  The version of
Matlab I am using has the syms package

On Fri, Aug 29, 2003 at 04:51:50PM +0400, Andrei Zorine wrote:
> to(x,y):=block([inc:0,dif:0,x:x, y:y,i1],
>   if atom(x) then (inc:1, dif:y-x) 
>   else if length(x)=2 AND part(x,0)=by then (inc:part(x,2),dif:y-part(x,1), x:part(x,1))
>   else RETURN(0),print([x,inc,dif,y]),
>   makelist(x+inc*i1,i1,0,dif/inc));

Thanks, Andrei.  Wow, that looks pretty complicated to a newbie. :-)
It'll give me something to chew on, though.

Best Regards to all,
Ben

-- 
Ben Logan
Google Answers Researcher
answers.google.com
When you're searching for information, Google Answers.

Eating chocolate is like being in love without the aggravation.