Is there a way to symbolic constants to have them stay correctly in place?

I think it is simpler and perhaps a useful tactic to just point out that 
computers and humans
are not the same and what is especially convenient for computers is a 
kind of uniformity.
Based on that, sometimes the ordering of terms looks strange to humans.  
You can
of course try to instruct the computer in detail to follow what you 
think are the right "rules"
but in fact you are imposing something that is (most likely) 
inconsistent in the long
run.

Let the students get used to odd computer ordering, is my advice. 
Teaching them (or you)
about ordergreat etc. is not worth the time, even if you do manage to 
get it to look right.

note
y=m*x+b
F=m*a

so in a product like m*a, do we do reverse alphabetical order? but then 
we would
have x*m, wouldn't we?
what about
E=m*c^2
E=IR

There is some heuristic about "more constant"  but how do you know?

RJF




  On 4/20/2013 5:26 AM, Rupert Swarbrick wrote:
> Berns Buenaobra <berns.buenaobra at gmail.com> writes:
>> Hi all:
>>
>> Its a bit awkward and I find that students trying out Maxima can't resist
>> to check how well are constants are ordered in the derived relations from a
>> text book to a Maxima output.
> Have you looked at the ordergreat and orderless functions? For your
> first example:
>
>> Consider for example a worksheet snippet:
>>
>> ('diff(Vin(t),t,1))*C=Vout/R; solve([('diff(Vin(t),t,1))*C=Vout(t)/R],
>> [Vout(t)]);
> if I do the following, I think I get what you're after:
>
> (%i1) orderless(R,C);
> (%o1)                                done
> (%i2) first (solve([('diff(Vin(t),t,1))*C=Vout(t)/R], [Vout(t)]));
>                                           d
> (%o2)                     Vout(t) = R C (-- (Vin(t)))
>                                           dt
>
>
> Hopefully this is some help. There's also a package called "format"
> (look in share/contrib/format), which you might be interested in. I
> remember spending hours playing with it when I first started using
> Maxima but nowadays, I tend to just leave stuff in the form Maxima
> chooses by default and do the reordering in my head (if I can...)
>
> Rupert
>
>
> PS: Your message got held in the moderation queue. If you don't want
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