On Wed, Aug 25, 2010 at 12:55 PM, Ether Jones <maxima at etherjones.us> wrote:
> How would a new user figure that out? ?I searched the docs for a
> lot of phrases and words, but "simpsum" was not something
> I would pull out of a hat :-)
Well, the HTML documentation (which is incidentally displayed
by F1 in wxMaxima in Windows) has a category system
which can help you find related items.
See: http://maxima.sourceforge.net/docs/manual/en/maxima_toc.html
and look for "Documentation Categories" at the end of the page.
The category "Sums and products" might have something useful to you.
Btw i think you'll find simplify_sum (qv) is much more powerful than simpsum.
(The categories aren't in the documentation displayed by "?"
since there is no way to follow links.)
> And, is there a way to ask Maxima to tell me how it arrived at that answer?
Nope. Would be nice if it could.
best
Robert Dodier