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IJCAI
1989

An Approximate Solver for Symbolic Equations

13 years 4 months ago
An Approximate Solver for Symbolic Equations
This paper describes a program, called NEWTON, that finds approximate symbolic solutions to parameterized equations in one variable. N E W T O N derives an initial approximation by solving for the dominant term in the equation, or if this fails, by bisection. It refines this approximation by a symbolic version of Newton's method. It tests whether the first Newton iterate lies closer to the solution than does the initial solution. If so, it returns this iterate; otherwise, it chooses a new initial solution and tries again. 1 I n t r o d u c t i o n Research in symbolic equation solving has focused on exact solution methods. The resulting programs, such as MACSYMA [Mathlab Group, 1983] and PRESS [Bundy and Welham, 198l], either return an exact solution or fail. Yet, scientists and engineers routinely must solve problems that have no exact closed-form solution. They need an equation solver that finds adequate approximate solutions to such problems, rather than failing. In fact, they...
Elisha Sacks
Added 07 Nov 2010
Updated 07 Nov 2010
Type Conference
Year 1989
Where IJCAI
Authors Elisha Sacks
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