Symbolic Math Software

[Updraft]

30 years ago a student in another class told me about using PL1 to write a program to perform symbolic math. My robotics work at the time could benefit directly from such a tool. I had many 4x4 matrices to multiply symbolically and simplify before arriving at the cleanest form of the equations. There were many terms that would cancel or would go to 1 as a result of a trig identity.

In my current work I mostly use Excel or TK! Solver for the real crunching, but I was wondering if there are modern tools that can do symbolic multiplication (math). I can see it being very valuable for developing simplified forms of equations.

TIA for any enlightenment.

- - -Updraft

 

[IRstuff]

Sure, there are lots:
Mathematica
Maple
MuPad


not sure why they all start with "M" though.

TTFN

FAQ731-376

 

[Denial]

IRstuff, I suspect you are about to be deluged with exceptions to "the IRstuff conjecture".

Your temporary good fortune, and my permanent bad fortune, is that the product I use (Derive) died years ago.

 

[GregLocock]

here's a list

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_computer_algebra_systems

Cheers

Greg Locock


New here? Try reading these, they might help FAQ731-376

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[IRstuff]

True enough, my point of departure was simply commercial products with relatively wide user bases,... and basic laziness...

Something interesting that's listed in the Wikipedia article is TI's Nspire CAS, which is supposedly derived from Derive. Note also that TI's entry includes the calculator that runs the software. My son has the non-CAS version, and it's pretty impressive, a TI-83 on massive steroids. It's a bit bulky, but comes with interchangeable keyboards that convert its functionality to behave more like the TI-83, for whatever reason...

TTFN

FAQ731-376