Re: beginner’s question with Maxi ma

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Newsgroups gmane.comp.mathematics.maxima.general
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> If you want to put the first argument of a sum-like function 
> at the end, so you say rsum(i,1,n,f(i)), then here's a 
> definition for a reversed sum, rsum. [this ancient code is 
> using original lisp names: (car '(a b c d)) is a. 
> (cadddr '(a b c d)) is d.]

Thank you for your enlightening comparison of the LISP implementations of Maxima’s sum() function with your rsum() function. car and cadddr take me back to a programming languages course that I’d had in the 1980s.

> Of course humans are very flexible and in most circumstances 
> I would think that learning to use sum() should not be much 
> of a burden.

Humans are indeed very flexible; consider the various ways that humans can express a date as a combination of year, month, and day. Some people have a preference for date components to be in a certain order, even though it wouldn’t be much of a burden to put those components in a different order. Learning to put those components in a particular order is orthogonal to having a preference for putting them in another order; they’re not mutually exclusive.


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