My 2 cents here: why do we keep the "numerical solve" function with a completely different name? I know that "find_root" or "roots" make sense, but wouldn't just be much better to name them "solve_numerical", or anything like putting a postfix after the word "solve"? I don't know whether this is generally a good thing to do, but I just keep finding it so easy if I do "solve[Tab]" so that ALL the functions related to solving equations are shown (both exact and numerical)
cheers maurizio On Sep 17, 4:52 pm, Burcin Erocal <bur...@erocal.org> wrote: > Hi, > > I don't use the solve() function at all. I'm probably missing the > user's point of view completely, so please take what I say below with a > grain of salt. > > Going by the "What Would Maple Do" rule, I would like solve() to remain > exact. Looking through the examples here > > http://www.maplesoft.com/support/help/view.aspx?path=examples/solve > > I couldn't see any cases where Maple switches to numeric results. > > I think it's better to return no results if the exact methods don't > work, and point the user to the numeric solver. This is fsolve [1] in > the case of Maple. Is it find_root() in Sage? > > [1]http://www.maplesoft.com/support/help/view.aspx?path=fsolve > > On Thu, 17 Sep 2009 06:30:19 -0700 (PDT) > > kcrisman <kcris...@gmail.com> wrote: > > > For a frustrated user because of precisely this issue, see > >http://groups.google.com/group/sage-support/browse_thread/thread/6407... > > . I now think we should definitely change to having to_poly_solve as > > an option, but not default, even if we miss some solutions that way, > > because it's unlikely that Maxima will be able to change its behavior > > very soon, even if they wanted to. > > In this case, I agree that we should make to_poly_solve a non-default > option. > > Thanks. > > Burcin --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ To post to this group, send an email to sage-devel@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to sage-devel-unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/sage-devel URL: http://www.sagemath.org -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
