[sen1 at math.msu.edu, Wed, 23 Aug 2006 12:24:20 -0400 (EDT)]:
> For me, (aside from teaching tools), the main reason to find
> symbolic solutions of algebraic equations would be to be able to
> compute those solutions to arbitrary precision at some point.
At the risk of pointing out the obvious: This opens yet another,
rather unpleasant can of worms, viz., numerical stability of a naive
evaluation of the expression. The symbolic expressions that come out
of some CAS computation may not be very well suited for numerical
processing, especially if you also want to know the precision of the
result may be.
Of course, for a given problem you may already know that things are
well-behaved, or that they ought to be.
Not even EUR 0.02,
Albert.