newbie, solving an equation numerically





On Thu, 30 Nov 2006, Daniel Lakeland wrote:

> On Thu, Nov 30, 2006 at 09:42:17PM +0100, Hugo Coolens wrote:
>> Is find_root a separate package? Where can I find it?
>>
>> I'll try it out on my system and tell you what the result is
>
> find_root is standard as of fairly recently. It used to be called
> "interpolate" but that was deemed confusing so it was renamed about a
> year ago I think. It's in the docs. It does a binary search followed
> by newton's method when it gets close enough.
find_root was not as such in my version of Maxima (version 5.9.1, 
installed with Debian Sarge) but "interpolate" was and showed exactly the same behaviour.
Using the quote-quote operator did solve the problem.

I also noticed that the word find_root in the texmacs environment causes 
the r to be interpreted as a subscript.

The reason why I wanted to solve this equation numerically is because I 
think it can't be solved otherwise i.e. as an explicit function of tau_1 
and tau_2, or is this a wrong supposition?

hugo