On Tue, Nov 24, 2009 at 9:27 AM, William Stein <wst...@gmail.com> wrote: > On Tue, Nov 24, 2009 at 8:59 AM, Felix Breuer <fe...@fbreuer.de> wrote: >> Hello! >> >> I want to do symbolic linear algebra with Sage, i.e. I want to >> calculate, say, the determinant of a matrix, where the entries of the >> matrix are symbolic expressions. I am under the impression that maxima >> is the right package for this task. Correct? >> >> I am now faced with the following problem: I have a list of vectors >> (with symbolic entries) and I want to form a matrix that has these >> vectors as columns. How do I achieve that? >> >> For what it's worth, here is what I tried: >> >> a = maxima('matrix([a1],[a2])') >> b = maxima('matrix([b1],[b2])') >> c = maxima('matrix([c1],[c2])') >> M = maxima('matrix(a-c,b-c)') >> M = maxima('matrix(transpose(a-c),transpose(b-c))') >> >> In the last two lines I get errors about the arguments being "invalid >> rows". >> >> Any suggestions? > > Use Sage. Don't use Maxima.
Oh, but just for the record, Sage may use Maxima automatically in the background for some operations, when you do what I suggested. > var('a1,a2,b1,b2,c1,c2') > a = matrix([[a1],[a2]]) > b = matrix([[b1],[b2]]) > c = matrix([[c1],[c2]]) > M = (a-c).stack(b-c) > N = transpose(a-c).stack(transpose(b-c)) > > or > > R.<a1,a2,b1,b2,c1,c2> = QQ[] > a = matrix([[a1],[a2]]) > b = matrix([[b1],[b2]]) > c = matrix([[c1],[c2]]) > M = (a-c).stack(b-c) > N = transpose(a-c).stack(transpose(b-c)) > > See > > http://sagenb.org/home/pub/1123/ > > William > -- William Stein Associate Professor of Mathematics University of Washington http://wstein.org -- To post to this group, send email to sage-support@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to sage-support-unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/sage-support URL: http://www.sagemath.org