Services & ResourcesWolfram ForumsMathGroup Archive

Eliminating common factors?

• To: mathgroup at smc.vnet.net
• Subject: [mg93299] Eliminating common factors?
• From: AES <siegman at stanford.edu>
• Date: Mon, 3 Nov 2008 05:26:38 -0500 (EST)
• Organization: Stanford University

I have a simple, totally algebraic symbolic calculation that displays
its output in the form (rewritten here using TeX notation)

4 ( {a \over 4 } + { b \over 4 c } )

where a, b and c are fairly simple products of purely algebraic
quantities; \over is the TeX notation for a display fraction; and the
curly brackets are just for TeX purposes and are not there in the actual
output.

Is there any Assumption for Simplify, or any other _simple_ way, to get
rid of those (utterly!!!) superfluous 4's?

[I suppose the real question is, why doesn't M cancel 'em the hell out
in the first place?!?!]

• Prev by Date: Re: Sum[n^(-n), {n, 1, Infinity}]
• Next by Date: Re: How to reverse Enter and Shift-Enter
• Previous by thread: Re: Aborting a computation ...
• Next by thread: RE: Eliminating common factors?