[plt-scheme] Re: [plt-edu] Symbolic algebra

Mark (and everyone),

On Mar 16, 2010, at 6:39 PM, Matthias Felleisen wrote:

> On Mar 16, 2010, at 3:16 AM, Mark Engelberg wrote:
> 
>> Does anyone have any pointers to some good resources about how you'd go about implementing a symbolic algebra system in Scheme or a related functional language?  Solving equations, factoring polynomials, etc.
>> 
>> I don't really care about speed, because I know there are a lot of finely-tuned libraries out there for that purpose; I'm more interested in knowing if there's a clean and simple "reference" design that illustrates all the principles involved.


Gerry Sussman teaches a class at MIT called Adventures in Advanced Symbolic Programming: http://groups.csail.mit.edu/mac/users/gjs/6.945/ .  I don't think they spend much time specifically on solving equations, factoring polynomials, etc, but rather on the infrastructure that lets you easily implement these algorithms.  It might be a diversion from your goal, but it could also be interesting to read the class notes.  

Also, the scmutils system that Gerry and Jack Wisdom maintain does a lot of these things (algebraic simplification, factoring polynomials, etc); you can find the source (download as a tarball) at http://groups.csail.mit.edu/mac/users/gjs/6946/linux-install.htm .

Will