newbie | implicit differentiation



  Actually -- I lie. I did look at impdiff, but without some worked 
examples for the implicit_derivative function, wasn't sure how to 
proceed (it would be handy if everything was defined/described with at 
least one or more worked examples -- a general comment, and not simply 
one directed at Maxima). In looking at the basic description, it 
involves an array function, amongst other things I'm not (as of yet) 
familiar with. I was looking for the path of least resistance -- a 
workable solution (that was somewhat more forgiving for newcomers than 
this function seems to be) was posted earlier.

On 10/14/2010 6:49 PM, Evan Cooch wrote:
>  No -- I wasn't aware of it.
>
> As a newbie, I'll ask now -- what is the best way to suss out what 
> functions/packages are available? (such as impdiff). Being a heavy 
> user of *TeX, and R, I'm used to the concept of lots of 'add-ons', and 
> while I have loads of experience tracking down which package does what 
> for *TeX and R, as a Maxima newbie, am happy to be told the best way 
> to find this or that on my own (minimizing the number of simplistic 
> questions posted to the maillist)..
>
> Thanks again...
>
> On 10/14/2010 6:38 PM, Dan Stanger wrote:
>> Have you tried impdiff, in the share/contrib directory?
>> Dan Stanger
>> egc wrote:
>>> GIven a polynmial in multiple variables, I'm looking for the Maxima 
>>> equivalent of the Maple function implicitdiff.
>>>
>>> Say
>>>
>>> f:=lamda^2-lambda*c-a*lambda+a*c-b^2=0
>>>
>>> To implicitly differentiate lambda with respect to  in Maple, I'd 
>>> simply enter
>>>
>>> implicitdiff(f,lambda,c)
>>>
>>> yielding
>>>
>>>  (a-lambda)/(-2lambda+c+a)
>>>
>>>
>>> There is no straight equivalent in Maxima for the implicitdiff 
>>> command in Maple (not that I can find). Did find 
>>> implicit_derivative, but I can't seem to make out exactly what it 
>>> does (since there are no examples I could find that demonstrated 
>>> it). Google didn't seem to help here much either.
>>>
>>> So, how does one do simple implicit differentiation in Maxima? Is 
>>> there a simple 'single command' to do the trick, or do I have to 
>>> break up the problem in pieces, somehow?
>>>
>>> Pointers to the obvious appreciated.
>>>
>>> Thanks very much in advance.
>>>
>>>
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>>
>>
>