On Mon, 10 Nov 2008 17:36:46 -0800 (PST) cesarnda <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> > Actually this sum can't be done by Maxima, but Derive can do it (even > an old version of derive). do you have an idea of how this problem is > planning to be solved? As Robert Dodier pointed out, Maxima can actually do the sum, it is just a bug in the maxima interface which fails to call the right function. As he also mentioned, Maxima could probably solve this problem before any others. Here is a paragraph from A = B [1], p. 74: R. W. Gosper, Jr., discovered his algorithm in conjunction with his work on the development of one of the first symbolic algebra programs, Macsyma. Because of his algorithm, Macsyma had a seemingly uncanny ability to find simple formulas for sums of the type (5.1.1). [1] http://www.math.upenn.edu/~wilf/AeqB.html Returning to the question of how Sage plans to handle this, the short answer is "I am working on it." :) We will have a completely new implementation of summation, independent of the one in Maxima. At the moment I have an implementation of the theoretical framework which lets you solve much more complicated sums than the ones above. Unfortunately, coming up with an interface that spares the user from the gory details of the theory will still be a challenge. Thus, it will be some time before these problems are handled natively in Sage, but then Sage will (hopefully) be more capable than the others out there. Cheers, Burcin --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ To post to this group, send email to sage-support@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/sage-support URLs: http://www.sagemath.org -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
