request for comments/improvements/style of first Maxima script
Subject: request for comments/improvements/style of first Maxima script
From: Stavros Macrakis
Date: Tue, 15 Jan 2008 10:55:34 -0500
On Jan 15, 2008 5:10 AM, Bart Vandewoestyne
<Bart.Vandewoestyne at telenet.be> wrote:
> On Fri, Jan 11, 2008 at 02:08:12PM -0500, Stavros Macrakis wrote:
> > ...you might want to look at factor(phi[...]). It factors very nicely.
>
> Thanks for pointing me to the factor() command! ...
> My goal is to find functions f(x) that lead to 'simple or
> manageable' expressions for phi(x) so that I can easily implement
> them in for example Fortran and perform numerical experiments
> with them.
If you can define a metric for 'simple' and some sort of procedure for
generating candidate functions, you can certainly search through the
space of possible functions. You may also want to search
(combinatorially) through the space of possible simplifications. I
wrote some simple examples of this some time ago on the list and will
try to find them. I think Costas Frangos and Barton Willis have also
worked on things like this.
Be careful, though, sometimes symbolically 'simple or manageable'
expressions are not numerically well-behaved.
-s