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manipulating expressions

• To: mathgroup at smc.vnet.net
• Subject: [mg4203] manipulating expressions
• From: Xah Lee <xah at best.com>
• Date: Thu, 13 Jun 1996 23:11:12 -0400
• Organization: Best Internet Communications
• Sender: owner-wri-mathgroup at wolfram.com

A programming problem.

I have an expression, for example

(16 a^4 - 8 a^2 m^2 + m^4 - 8 a^2 n^2 + 2 m^2 n^2 + n^4 - 
  8 a^2 p^2 - 2 m^2 p^2 - 2 n^2 p^2 + p^4 - 8 a^2 q^2 - 
  2 m^2 q^2 - 2 n^2 q^2 + 2 p^2 q^2 + q^4 )

that I want to write in a concise form, namely, as a sum of a few 
products. There are many possibilities and it's tedious to form each. 
How would you write a Mathematica program that would take such an 
expression and spits out a few choicy forms for the user?

By looking at the expression in several short forms, one gains insight 
to the structure of the expression.

Thanks, and please also answer by email.

 Xah
 xah at best.com; 74631.731 at compuserve.com
 http://www.best.com/~xah/SpecialPlaneCurves_dir/specialPlaneCurves.html
 Mountain View, CA, USA
 Quote of the day: Why I'm not a Christian:
 http://www.bmacleod.com/why.html

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