On Tuesday, December 11, 2012 6:52:53 PM UTC-5, JamesHDavenport wrote: > > > > On Tuesday, 11 December 2012 13:15:09 UTC, kcrisman wrote: >> >> I wouldn't worry about it, since in general there is no way to define >> "simpler" expression that is fully useful at all times, and for more >> complicated expressions more detail work would be needed anyway. >> > Pedantic Note. Jacques Carette's paper: Understanding Expression > Simplification. > Proc. ISSAC 2004 (ed. J. Gutierrez), ACM Press, New York, 2004, pp. 72-79. > http://www.cas.mcmaster.ca/~carette/publications/simplification.pdf. > defines it in a useful way, just not in a computable way (that I can see > in practice). >
Very interesting paper. I guess I was referring to the sense that (1+x)(1-x) and 1-x^2 might each be considered "simpler" depending on the context, which is the way a lot of people who don't know about decidability would perceive this question (or so my experience has been interacting with a lot of people who ask about why Sage doesn't "simplify" this or that). I suppose the answer to my example would depend on what you pick for your axiomoids? RJF always seems to have a useful comment about these things as well. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "sage-support" group. 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. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/sage-support?hl=en.
