Irreducible polynomials / sum of products of linear factors



andre maute wrote:
> On Sunday 19 July 2009, andre maute wrote:
> > Could Maxima do the following automatically?
....
no, not with a single command.

yes, you, or someone else, could write a program to exhaustively list 
all possible rearrangements of terms of this nature.

Assume there are M terms in h,  fully expanded.  You supply k. 
For each distinct partition P of the terms of h into k sets, factor the 
members of P.
If they all factor into linear factors you are done.

> Two weeks and still no answer?
> Isn't this a topic in computer algebra,
> if one can't factor a given polynomial?
No, because what you are asking for is not to "factor" a given polynomial.
Factoring a polynomial P  expresses P as a product of irreducible 
polynomials.

Perhaps the reason you have not gotten an answer is that no one who has 
looked at this has any suggestion as to how to do this other than the 
obvious combinatorial search algorithm which is stated above.

RJF