Greetings --
Using most recent build of Maxima under Windows and Linux. Am trying to
move from Maple to Maxima, and am struggling with a few things (so far,
Maxima is very impressive). I was fooling with Maxima over the week-end,
to updates some lecture notes, when I realized I must not fully
understand how Maxima handles 'solve' (meaning, it doesn't do what I
though it would do, after my experiences with Maple).
For example,
f : p^y*(1-p)^(N-y);
df : diff(f,p);
So, set up simple binomial, differentiate it, and then want to solve for
p, which should yield y/N
However,
solve(df,p);
yield a fairly complicated 'mess'
[p^y=-((1-p)*p^(y-1)*y)/(y-N)]
whereas linsolve(df,p) yields p=y/N as expected. However, it isn't
obvious to me (based on the helpfile) why (i) basic 'solve' yields what
it does, and why (ii) 'linsolve' seems to be needed (apparently
generally, in my tests to date) to yield 'simplified' solutions to
fairly simply expressions.
Pointers to the obvious, or a quick explanation, most appreciated.
Thanks in advance...