`to_poly_solve` inconsistency of solutions for equivalent forms of goniometric equations
Subject: `to_poly_solve` inconsistency of solutions for equivalent forms of goniometric equations
From: Barton Willis
Date: Wed, 18 Apr 2012 23:02:57 +0000
Appending 'simpfuncs = ['expand] helps somewhat; try to_poly_solve(sin(x)/cos(x) = 1, x, 'simpfuncs = ['expand]);
I made no particular effort to make to_poly_solve (usually) find syntactically identical solution sets to semantically identical equations. That simply
wasn't a design goal. Although it might seem easy to do write a pre-processor that would do things such as sin(x)/cos(x) --> tan(x), it's not so
easy to do this in a way that doesn't make some answers much much more complicated, or to do it without introducing spurious solutions.
Most days, I'm happy when nobody locates an abject bug in to_poly_solve :)
Thanks for the interest in to_poly_solve.
--bw
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