Re: Calculus of variations
- To: mathgroup at smc.vnet.net
- Subject: [mg20146] Re: Calculus of variations
- From: wcamp92147 at aol.com (WCamp92147)
- Date: Sat, 2 Oct 1999 03:05:05 -0400
- Organization: AOL http://www.aol.com
- References: <7suv87$21u@smc.vnet.net>
- Sender: owner-wri-mathgroup at wolfram.com
>here are many texts
>that discuss this problem. The ones I am familiar with are physics texts
>such a Goldstein's mechanics book
>
>Kevin
I'm sorry about the misunderstanding, guess I wasn't clear in my original post.
I'm looking for a Mathematica-oriented book that deals with the calculus of
variations, in particular how to "teach" Mathematica Leibniz's rules for
differentiating integrals, and how to integrate by parts. The problem I am
considering doesn't seem to fit quite into the classical framework of the
calculus of variations, but I think would use similar techniques. I'll repeat
the problem of interest here:
given two functions of a single
variable f1[x] and f2[x], which are 0 almost everywhere, find the
value of x0 such that Integrate[(f1[x]-f2[x+x0])^2,{x,-infinity,
infinity}] is minimized.
Thanks for your response -- I had fogotten about the discussion in Goldstein,
which has gathered dust on my bookshelf for years.
Bill Campbell