[Tutor] math question

[Danny Yoo]

On Fri, 23 Apr 2004, Tim Peters wrote:

> Note that when you see "sqrt(2)**2" and think "ah, that must be 2!",
> you're not doing arithmetic at all in your head:  you're doing symbolic
> algebra, building on your knowledge about how the square root and square
> functions relate to each other (as inverses).  If you were doing
> arithmetic on paper instead, one operation at a time, you'd have exactly
> the same problem with losing information at each step (unless you had
> enough spare time to write down an infinite number of digits at each
> step <wink>).


Hi Chris,

There are some specialized systems that allow computers to do symbolic
algebra.  Mathematica is one of these:

   http://www.wolfram.com/

and there's a Python library that can interface with Mathematica called
PYML:

    http://py-ml.sourceforge.net/

Mathematica isn't free, unfortunately.



There was another Python project to do symbolic algebra called Pythonica:

    http://www.strout.net/python/pythonica.html

but I'm not so sure if it's still actively developed.


Good luck to you!