From: Gavin Kistner <gavin@...>
Date: 2005-06-09T09:43:33+09:00
Subject: Re: [ANN] StringMatrix

On Jun 8, 2005, at 10:09 AM, Ara.T.Howard wrote:
> On Wed, 8 Jun 2005, Gavin Kistner wrote:
>> I decided to write a little Ruby library to do the task for me. I  
>> wrote a matrix class which knows how to do matrix math on strings,  
>> producing formulae from them. After the initial pass produced a  
>> lot of values like "0*sinX" and "0 + 0 + 1*(sinX)" I made it a bit  
>> smarter, so that 0s and 1s properly simplify the equations during  
>> calculation.
>>
>> It doesn't produce perfectly-reduced equations by any means, but  
>> it did the trick. In the end, I got my result :)
> on a related note
>
>   http://blade.nagaokaut.ac.jp/~sinara/ruby/math
>   http://blade.nagaokaut.ac.jp/~sinara/ruby/math/algebra/

Do you (or anyone else) use this library? I _barely_ understand how  
to set up a single polynomial function using it (what is a 'ring'  
anyhow?), and I can't see how you would create a matrix of arbitrary  
formulae that would be properly multiplied and reduced.