Question

Long shot but does anyone have experience of using Maxima (maths program) for finding stationary points.

My user guide offers no help, ive tried to manipulate the following derivative to find the stationary points however its not proving helpful.

(9*x^6+28*x^4+51*x^2-88*x-10)/(3*x^2+2)^2

Anyone got any ideas?

Answer 1

If (9*x^6+28*x^4+51*x^2-88*x-10)/(3*x^2+2)^2
is the derivative of some function and you want to find max/min, you would set the above equal to zero
that would leave you with
9x^6 + 28x^4 + 51x^2 - 88x - 10 = 0

I am not at all familiar with your software, but my favourite math website shows two real solutions for the above.

http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=9x%5E6+%2B+28x%5E4+%2B+51x%5E2+-+88x+-+10+%3D+0

See what you can do with this.
Do you have the original function?
if so, plug in the two real solutions

Answer 2

Thanks Reiny,

Ive had a look on wolfram alpha and seen the solutions. My problem is I need to show it using Maxima but for some reason Maxima will not solve my equation 9x^6 + 28x^4 + 51x^2 - 88x - 10 = 0.

So frustrating.

Answer 3

I'm surprised that Maxima gagged on a simple polynomial. I've used it very little, but I know it's been around for over forty years, and was way powerful back in the 70's.

Maybe that pesky 88x term messes things up; otherwise it'd just be a cubic in x^2.