newbie question



On 3/9/2013 10:47 PM,  Paul J. Ste. Marie wrote:
> ratsubst is definitely an improvement over subst's behavior!
>
> It still doesn't gather the terms, though.  I wind up with
>
> (%o118) cx = -(b2m1*y2-b2m1*y1-2*b*x2-2*b*x1)/(4*b)

Ah, but ratsubst'ing the term in, calling ratsimp, and then subst'ing it 
back out does do the trick:

distrib(
   subst(x1+x2,sumx,
     subst(y2-y1,delta_y,
       ratsimp(
         ratsubst(sumx,x1+x2,
           ratsubst(delta_y,y2-y1,sol_1)
         )
       )
     )
   )
);

gives a nice tidy

cx = (x2+x1)/2-(b^2-1)*(y2-y1)/(4*b)