[LON-CAPA-users] Extracting the numerical value from a solve() Maxima command

[Seema Ali]

Hi,

This was my attempt to get Maxima to solve the following equation:
$base1^$power1maxima = $base2^$power2maxima
where $power1maxima and $power2maxima are linear equations and
$base1 and $base2 are constant values.

Below is a snippet of part of my code:

$solution = &cas('maxima',"float(solve(($power1maxima)*log($base1) = ($power2maxima)*log($base2),x))");
$solution =~ /(-?\d+(?:\.\d+)?)/;
$answer = $1;


Here are a couple of examples of some values:

Example 1:
An equation it is trying to solve: (2 * x)*log(7) = (-7 * x - 7)*log(9)
$solution is [x = -.7980624185332027]
answer=7

Example 2:
An equation it is trying to solve: (2x)log(4)=(?5x?8)log(3)
$solution is [x=?1063303930517583]
answer=?1063303930517583

The answer for Example 2 should be -1.063303930517583.  If I double click on the values on the page I get the decimal point, otherwise if I highlight them which is what I did for Example 2, the decimal is missing, which is a separate issue.

Example 2 also generates this error:
ERROR: Computer's answer is incorrect ("-1.063303930517583"). It is likely that the tolerance range [-1.06340393051758, -1.06320393051758] needs to be adjusted.
This error occurred while processing response 1_7 in part 0

My tolerance range is 5%.

I think it is my attempt at a regular expression is probably causing this problem.

How do I extract the numerical value from a solve command in Maxima?


Thanks.
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