Thanks to Paul Bowyer and Robert Dodier for your support.
Robert Dodier's comment to remove the assignment "(%i4) en2: 5$" that was
conflicting with Maxima code solved the problem. The following code works.
(%i1) x^2+d*y*4+d^2*(-4)$
(%i2) e1: rhs(first(solve(x^2+d*y*4+d^2*(-4),y)));
(%i3) en1: 10$
(%i4) e2: subst([x=en1, d=en2],[first(diff(e1,x)), diff(e1,x)])$
(%i5) %phi[1] : first(e2)$
(%i6) %phi[2] : second(e2)$
(%i7)
((%pi*1/2)+(atan((((%phi[1]+(%phi[2]*(-1))))^((-1))*(1+(%phi[2]*%phi[1]))))*
(-1)));
(%i8) find_root(%o7 - 0.178092938, en2, 10, 80);
(%o8) 56.00196850837668
Paul Bowyer and Robert Dodier's were of great help in many ways. I had
studied the for, while and Newton loops as carefully by studying all
available documentation, trying to solve my own problem before turning to
the e-mail list for help. Although it was Paul Bowyer that led me to a
correct use of for and while loop, I noticed that the loops do not give a
clean numerical value such as found in c language code. And also there was
no clean method of inserting print statements to see what is happening in
the loops.
Robert Dodier's clearly gives a very condense result without having to use a
loop statement. I never would have discovered this on my own without your
help.
William Porter
wporter at omegapar.com
-----Original Message-----
From: Robert Dodier [mailto:robert.dodier at gmail.com]
Sent: Tuesday, September 07, 2010 2:14 PM
To: William Porter
Cc: Paul Bowyer; maxima at math.utexas.edu
Subject: Re: Find the angle between two tangents
On Tue, Sep 7, 2010 at 2:19 PM, William Porter
<wmporter.omegapar at comcast.net> wrote:
> (%i4) en2: 5$
Just omit this assignment. Then later results will have the symbol en2
instead of the numerical value.
HTH
Robert Dodier
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