On Fri, Jun 15, 2007 at 06:26:29PM -0400, Kamaraju S Kusumanchi wrote:
>
> Say I have
>
> (%i5) a : D^2 * (D^2 - x^2)/(D+3*x)^4;
...
> How can I change 'a' so that maxima displays
....
> (%i6) b : (1-(x/D)^2)/(1+3*(x/D))^4;
...
> Any ideas?
I love these kinds of questions, because I usually learn a lot about
how to use maxima from them...
The only thing I can figure out is "by hand" methods. That is, telling
maxima to carry out some operations. you can make this easier to do by
using pickapart:
(%i36) pickapart(a,2);
2
(%t36) D
2 2
(%t37) D - x
(%t38) D + 3 x
%t36 %t37
(%o38) ---------
4
%t38
(%i51) multthru(1/D^2,%t37)/multthru(1/D,%t38)^4;
2
x
1 - --
2
D
(%o51) ----------
3 x 4
(--- + 1)
D
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
I welcome the gurus who will suggest some other ways. But often it's
impossible to get maxima to give you exactly the form you want through
complete automation. Maxima can't read your mind. Sometimes you can at
least use maxima to prove that the manual substitutions worked out
correctly.
(%i59) is(ratsimp(%o51)=ratsimp(a));
(%o59) true
--
Daniel Lakeland
dlakelan at street-artists.org
http://www.street-artists.org/~dlakelan