Perhaps one way of learning about using Maxima is to take one of your
"hand" calculations and break it down into what you consider basic
"constructive" operations, and try to explain each of the operations in a
totally mechanical way.
For example, a constructive operation might be:
consider an equation. " Move all terms that have an explicit dependency on
the variable x to the left hand side. Move all other terms to the right hand
side. "
One non-constructive operation (which I encountered in doing asymptotic
expansions "automatically")
"delete all secular terms".
Why is this non-constructive? Because identifying secular terms required
different operations on different examples. There seemed to be no universal
constructive recipe.
If each of the steps is truly constructive and does not require huge
resources (like billions of terms), then it is likely that closer study of
the Maxima manual will help find a way. It may be necessary to write a
sequence of steps to do it.
Sometimes Maxima will have a command to do something that you don't know how
to do at all except maybe by guesswork. Certain kinds of integrals.
Polynomial factoring. But generally there is no magic, and if you are
reasonably skilled in applied mathematics, you will know more than Maxima.
Maxima does have the advantage of doing many calculations rapidly and
accurately, so sometimes you can trade off clever vs. fast. Instead of
finding a shortcut, let Maxima make a long, but very easy to describe,
calculation.
RJF
> -----Original Message-----
> From: maxima-bounces at math.utexas.edu
> [mailto:maxima-bounces at math.utexas.edu] On Behalf Of Robert Dodier
> Sent: Thursday, September 07, 2006 7:17 PM
> To: Hugemann
> Cc: maxima at math.utexas.edu
> Subject: Re: [Maxima] Simplification problem
>
> On 9/6/06, Hugemann <Auto at hugemann.de> wrote:
>
> > Besides my actual problem, again the question: Is there any
> 'real life'
> > introduction to Maxima? What reading would you suggest? The PDFs I
> > have found so far are either comprising (maxima.pdf) or
> rather short
> > (intromax.pdf). I don't feel that I have learned how to really work
> > with Maxima.
>
> You might take a look at http://maxima.sourceforge.net/docs.shtml .
> The tutorial "The Computer Algebra Program Maxima" has
> several worked examples. There are several other documents as well.
>
> Hope this helps
> Robert Dodier
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