Thanks for your interest in Maxima. The "-+" in the solution of the
quadratic equation represents the choice of either the positive or the
negative square root. Maxima has no way of representing that
directly. There are two ways you might approach this:
-- You could write two complete formulas, one with +, the other with -.
-- You could introduce a parameter, e.g. s*sqrt(b^2-4*a*c), and then
substitute s=1 and s=-1.
Note that you have to be careful with that "-+" convention, even when
doing math by hand. Depending on the situation, if you add -+1 to
-+1, the sum could be either -+2 -- if the two roots are correlated
(i.e. really the same root) or 0 (if they're anticorrelated) or
{-2,0,2} (if they're not correlated). Maxima doesn't handle that sort
of thing very well -- but it is not easy to handle!
-s
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On Wed, 23 Mar 2005 10:05:42 -0900, Justin Burket wrote:
> Question: how would I put in the quadratic function? I can get
> everything in except the -+