Certainly if you wish to have a program that recognizes asymptotes in
rational functions and plots them, that should be possible. This would be
useful for students who are given the homework of plotting functions and
asymptotes.
As for periodic functions, there is no decision procedure to determine if a
function is periodic or not.
Certainly you could notice that SOME functions are periodic. This would be
useful for students who are given the homework of plotting sin(x).
The Macintosh graphing calculator also has a standard initial interval for
plotting, I think.
Maybe what is needed is a package which might be called "student_plot" that
does the commonly accepted "right thing" for high-school or first year
calculus plotting homework.
It could then be extended, when it recognizes the function is not some
simple one, to be more sophisticated.
RJF
> -----Original Message-----
> From: maxima-bounces at math.utexas.edu
> [mailto:maxima-bounces at math.utexas.edu] On Behalf Of Mario Rodriguez
> Sent: Sunday, February 25, 2007 1:50 AM
> To: linux_milano at yahoo.it
> Cc: maxima at math.utexas.edu
> Subject: Re: [Maxima] plotting and solving inequalities
>
>
> > Yes, probably there is no clean solution. (see my reply the
> following post).
> > For periodic functions, the range could be cut after a few periods.
> > Just for your information: Mupad plots the function sin(x)
> within [-5,5]
> > The same for sin(8*x) and sin(0.1*x). So it appears that
> they have chosen a
> > fixed range for every function.
> >
> > I have also tried x/(x^2-100): the picture displayed is in
> the x range
> > [-5,5] and in the y range [-0.06,0.06].
> > --> Note that asimptotes (at +-10) are NOT shown. So that
> it appears Mupad
> > has gone for a not so smart solution.
> > I guess the Mupad 'marketing office' maintains that feature
> is appreciated
> > by users, as a starting point, if they did not care to set
> the range.
>
> Gnuplot has also a default xrange, namely [-10:10], so that you can
> write in a fresh session:
>
> plot sin(x)
>
> or
>
> plot sin(0.1*x)
>
> In both cases, you'll get plots in the [-10:10] domain.
>
> Honestly, I prefere to set myself the xrange, which is plot2d
> and draw2d
> policy.
>
>
>
> --
> Mario Rodriguez Riotorto
> www.biomates.net
> _______________________________________________
> Maxima mailing list
> Maxima at math.utexas.edu
> http://www.math.utexas.edu/mailman/listinfo/maxima
>