Re: [Maxima-discuss] The Upside

[Richard F. <fa...@gm...>]

I agree this is a good thing.  The best way, I think, to see if the 
facilities in Maxima or similar
programs are appropriate to "do math"  is to try to do something 
challenging.
Bill Martin's 196? thesis, Symbolic Mathematical Laboratory"  took that 
view.
https://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/13494

I tried doing more with the text by Nayfeh on Perturbation Methods.

Not so easy.
We look for a recipe...
(a) diagnose the problem
(b)  based on the diagnosis, make a choice of solution method (or 
methods to try)
(c) run the method(s)
(d) present the solution.

As I recall, this book (not atypical) has no  (a) or (b).
It looks like this
(a') For each specific problem that we know how to solve, present it, 
and the solution in a chapter.
(b') Some problems can be solved by more than one method. Write up an 
extra chapter.

You may recall this kind of organization from courses in integral 
calculus, differential equations,
maybe various other subjects like mechanics "word problems".

The idea of mechanizing all of mathematics has been toyed with for a 
long time.
See QED Manifesto in wikipedia.  (maybe also note Frege,  Russell's 
paradox, decidability)

RJF




On 10/27/20 2:25 PM, Fraser Doswell wrote:
> The good thing about using maxima and discussing the right way to do 
> things is that I am actually paying attention to the content of my CMT 
> textbook. You can read forever and l never really understand the 
> complexity behind the physics equations.
>
> Fraser
>
>
>
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