Re: Re: piecewise vs which
- To: mathgroup at smc.vnet.net
- Subject: [mg60196] Re: [mg60181] Re: piecewise vs which
- From: "David Park" <djmp at earthlink.net>
- Date: Wed, 7 Sep 2005 04:03:54 -0400 (EDT)
- Sender: owner-wri-mathgroup at wolfram.com
Helen, Mathematica is somewhere between being a toolkit for doing mathematics and a metatoolkit for making the tools to do mathematics. In any interesting application one will almost always have to add definitions and routines to obtain a convenient approach. I think this is a fact that students should learn, otherwise there is an invisible barrier blocking their way. If Mathematica had EVERY useful and convenient routine, then there would be billions of them and you wouldn't even be able to find the one you want. I grant that there is a matter of judgement on which routines should be 'built-in' but the problem will always be there and so users should just get used to writing additional definitions when they need them. David Park djmp at earthlink.net http://home.earthlink.net/~djmp/ From: Helen Read [mailto:hpr at together.net] To: mathgroup at smc.vnet.net > > Why don't you write a little function to test the equality of both > limits, like this: [snip] My point was that I would like a *built-in* function for finding two-sided limits (along the real line) that would be easy for beginning calculus students to use. -- Helen Read University of Vermont