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Re: Differential equations and notation

• To: mathgroup at yoda.physics.unc.edu
• Subject: Re: Differential equations and notation
• From: tim at math.earlham.edu (Tim McLarnan)
• Date: Wed, 21 Oct 92 22:47:47 EST

Brian Winkel recently gave a comparison of differential equation
notation in Maple and Mathematica.  I don't want to start a religious
war over symbolic algebra systems. (Maple makes and plots the same
sort of numerical solution Brian got with Mma.)

I do want to point out that to be fair, the original Maple example
(which Brian got from elsewhere) was written in a really awful way.
It could also have been written

(a*t^2+b)*(D@@2)(f)(t)+c*t*D(f)(t)+d*f(t)=e

This still isn't as neat as Brian's

(a t^2 + b) f''[t] + c t f'[t] + d f[t] == e

but it isn't the horror that was posted.  I think Mma wins on this
one, but it isn't the shutout it looked like in the original post.
---
Tim McLarnan  tim at math.earlham.edu
Dept. of Mathematics, Earlham College, Richmond, IN 47374