On Fri, Jun 25, 2010 at 11:44 AM, S. Robert James
<srobertja...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi. Checking out sage, and it's amazing.  I'm a bit overwhelmed by its
> size, though...  I intend to use it to handle some of the messy
> algebraic manipulations while I work on combinatorics.  Can anyone
> help with these questions:
>
> 1)  When I enter a sum in sage:
>
>  > h = sum(h_m, m, 1, 2*n)/2*n # h_m is already defined in terms of m
> and n
>
> sage gives me an answer in closed algebraic form.  That's great.  But
> I'd like to know how it simplified it.  Is there anyway to have Sage
> "show it's work"?  That is, show the steps it took to rewrite my sum
> into the closed form .

No.

>
> (As a beginner, I'm not sure if I'm using Sage right - so it's very
> important for me to be able to verify what it does.)
>
> 2) Now, when I tell sage to display h, it displays it in simplified
> form.  Great.  But I'd also like to be able to print out the original
> definition - how can I do that?

I don't know a way to do that.

> I'm sure my request isn't unique: one of the major goals of Sage is to
> provide a platform that allows people to _verify_ it, which is par for
> the course for any mathematician.

The main goal of the Sage project is to create a free, open source,
viable alternative to Magma, Maple, Mathematica, and Matlab.
Everything else is secondary.

I of course do wish Sage could do some of the sorts of things you ask
about above.   But that is not the "mission statement" of the project.

 -- William

-- 
William Stein
Professor of Mathematics
University of Washington
http://wstein.org

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