From: "M. Edward (Ed) Borasky" <znmeb@...>
Date: 2006-04-29T12:05:16+09:00
Subject: Re: Integration/Antidifferentiation Program

Basic symbolic differentiation is a piece of cake. It's usually done as 
an exercise in Lisp programming, but there's no reason on earth you 
can't do it in Ruby, or for that matter, any language that supports 
recursion. Hell, I've seen it done in Fortran! :)

Symbolic integration is quite a bit more difficult. However, there are 
quite a few open-source computer algebra packages you can learn the 
algorithms from. There is absolutely no need to spend the money on 
Mathematica or Maple -- both quite expensive outside of a university -- 
just to get some integrals done. Check out Maxima and Axiom.

I think a high-school-level differentiation routine would make an 
excellent Ruby quiz, now that I think of it.

SleepJunkie wrote:
> I can integrate and derive perfectly fine. It's more of "I just want to 
> do this" then "Do my homework" program. If I do it, however, I'll get 
> extra credit, which is always good.
>
> I guess this is going to be harder than I thought. I'll have to program 
> in the chain rule, quotient rule, product rule, and others..
>
> More suggestions are welcome :)
>
>   

-- 
M. Edward (Ed) Borasky

http://linuxcapacityplanning.com