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Don't understand behaviour of Solve[]

• To: mathgroup at smc.vnet.net
• Subject: [mg58554] Don't understand behaviour of Solve[]
• From: Oliver Friedrich <oliver.friedrich at tzm.de>
• Date: Thu, 7 Jul 2005 05:35:43 -0400 (EDT)
• Sender: owner-wri-mathgroup at wolfram.com

Hallo,

I have a problem understanding the general behaviour of the Solve[] 
function.

I have a set of equations with the variables a,b,c,d and k.

Evaluating Solve[set,k] or Solve[set,{a,b}] returns with {}, whereas Solve
[set,{k,b,c,d}] returns solutions for k,b,c and d.

My question: Why does Solve returns no solution when searching only for k 
for example and why is there a solution for several variables? I thought 
that giving a list of variables just means that I want to search for all of 
them. But the procedure doesn't seem to be independant from one variable to 
another.

What kind of information contains my list of variables except my wish to 
solve for these?

Many thanks

Oliver friedrich

• Follow-Ups:
  • Re: Don't understand behaviour of Solve[]
    • From: Andrzej Kozlowski <akozlowski@gmail.com>