simplification in matrices



On Thu, Mar 6, 2008 at 6:01 PM, Barton Willis <willisb at unk.edu> wrote:
>  There is no vector object in Maxima. Either you need to represent a vector as
>  a list or as a Matrix.

Barton,

A little quibble here.  There is no *separate* vector object in
Maxima, but lists *are* vectors, making no distinction between column
and row vectors.  The "." operation operates on list-vectors, where
[x1,x2,...] . [y1, y2,...] == [x1,x2,...] . transpose([y1,y2,...]).

There are of course applications where co/contravariant vectors need
to be distinguished, which the list approach doesn't address.

         -s