I have been trying at Maxima using the wxMaxima interface and have been quite pleased with it. So far I have been able to graph functions related to my research. However, Mathematica is pretty powerful as you can do differentiation, integration, etc. with ease. Just recently, I tried the differentiation ability of Maxima. It is possible to do differentiation in Maxima. So far I have only tried a simple polynomial. The command for differentiation is:
diff(expr, x)
Here is a screen shot of some examples I did.
Now if I could figure out if and how to simplify the last expression. If Maxima can do that, then it is a very viable option to Mathematica for several things.
I found this differentiation command at http://mathandmultimedia.com/tag/maxima-tutorial/
Update: So as you might have noticed I got a great tip in the comments on how to simplify this fraction. The tip comes from Mike Croucher who has a great, insightful blog http://www.walkingrandomly.com/ which I must admit I don't read often enough due to time but check it out anyways. It is well established and post similar topics yet more advanced and involved examples.
Hi
ReplyDeleteYou can get a simplify your last expression in Maxima as follows
fullratsimp(diff(-3/4*log((1+x)/(1-x)),x));
Hope this helps,
Mike
Aww sweet! Just tried it, and it works great! I figured Maxima could do this! Thanks for the tip! I'll update the post.
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