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Re: two quadratic eq, please help
From: |
Mike Miller |
Subject: |
Re: two quadratic eq, please help |
Date: |
Sun, 6 Feb 2005 20:36:51 -0600 (CST) |
On Sun, 6 Feb 2005, Vic Norton wrote:
So we have proved that a quadratic equation can have two solutions. I
will really be impressed if octave can find more than two! ;-)
My question is this. Why should one bother using a high powered
numerical language for an elementary exercise?
This is a philosophical point. Personally I believe it is important to
recognize trivialities, no matter the power of the machinery you have at
hand. Two circles can intersect in two points, one point, or they might
not intersect at all. That is all we are talking about here. Anybody
with a hand calculator should be able to figure out where these two
circles intersect (if they intersect at all). To hell with high level
numerical languages.
You never know why someone submits something to the list. Often they have
simplified their question so that it will be easy to answer, then they
construct their needed answer from what we give them.
I have no idea if the guy with the two circles had just that one problem
to solve. Maybe he has thousands of sets of equations to solve. We still
need high-level languages even when we can solve things by hand.
Anyway, I appreciated the intro to fsolve.
Mike
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