Quote:
Ed Kolis said:
I hope to eventually get symbolic variables in there so you could put in 3 * x + 4 * x and get 7 * x, (but I don't know how well that would work; how would I tell the program how to, say, recognize polynomials and multiply them out? not TOO hard, but then how would it know which form is the "simplest"? the one with the least number of characters? least number of parentheses? largest or smallest powers? and what if you throw in trig functions and user defined functions???  )
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Just pick with the form that is easiest to use calculationally, and convert all functions to it. For example, the "simplest form" could be the standard form of a polynomial, a(n) * x ^ n + a(n-1) * x (n-1) + ... + a(0). You would probably want to convert the equations to matrix form and use linear algebra anyways, as it is really the only sane way to deal with polynomials
. This uses the standard form of the functions.