"Bill Page" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> propose : ((***)) > There may be some situations, such as in the Axiom interpreter > where you might wish to warn the user about the sometimes > unexpected consequences of domains that allow this.
I agree with this, For students and I a lot of problems are about : << You think that 2 objects are identical if their writing are identical. >> The 2 way to read the x is logical when we think as axiom, but is a trap for students who use computer algebra for solving a mathematical exercice. > But really it is very simple and easy to predict. The problem > is that most people focus is on the wrong thing. This is especially > natural if they have previous experience with other computer algebra > systems. But almost all my student use derive or maple or a TI-9? for little computation, and during their mathematical studies they don't learn object programming. So it's impossible to say : << learn axiom from the emptyset. >> I like mupad because easy computation was easy to type, but difficult idea can be done with clever idea about Domains. I hope that axiom should have the same point of view. I don't like maple which have very often wrong results because it's impossible to have type : In maple the fact that 0.0 = 0 gives very surprising result. So I prefer explain mupad that axiom to my student, because if I don't have this error I can do a more difficult exercice. > I could imagine that some innocent looking > computation would not be correct in the situation above. As Martin I already imagine this error : P := DMP ([x,y], EXPR INT) a :P := x b := a/x differentiate(b,x) -- 1/x differentiate(b+x,x)@EXPR INT -- 0 I find it's a wonderful idea ((***)) to have an error or a warning during b := a/x. It's really possible ? Bill, I don't want to change all the axiom language ;-) it's the _only_ trap I see in the interpeter. The other computation are logical for students in mathematics. ;-) And if a student can understand the coefficient function, he can understand why it's a silly computation to type monomial (x, [0,0]...) Bill you think it's must remain possible, why not. Have a good day ! François _______________________________________________ Axiom-developer mailing list [email protected] http://lists.nongnu.org/mailman/listinfo/axiom-developer
