simplify

[Ingo Dahn]

Hi,

I am not sure what simplify does. For example

q=(x^2+4*x+4)/(x+2)^2

simplify(q)

doesn't do any simplification, while

factor(q) yields 1.

According to tab completion SageCell doesn't seem to support any other form of simplify. Is there any strategy to combine Sage commands in order to simplify rational function expressions?

Ingo

[Dima Pasechnik]

For rational functions you'd rather want to work with polynomials, not (symbolic) functions.

sage: R.<x>=QQ[]

sage: q=(x^2+4*x+4)/(x+2)^2

sage: q

1

sage: q=(x^2+4*x+4)/(x+2)^3

sage: q

1/(x + 2)

sage: q.parent()

Fraction Field of Univariate Polynomial Ring in x over Rational Field

[Michael Orlitzky]

On 12/29/2016 04:48 AM, Ingo Dahn wrote:
>
> According to tab completion SageCell doesn't seem to support any other form

> of *simplify*. Is there any strategy to combine Sage commands in order to
> simplify rational function expressions?

Plain "simplify" won't do much on its own. I guess it's only a top-level
function (as opposed to a method) because users of Mathematica and
friends will expect it to be there. But the good stuff can be found as
methods on the expression object:

sage: q=(x^2+4*x+4)/(x+2)^2
sage: q.simplify_full()
1