August 19, 2007
This session is based on the material in section 2.3 of Kelley's "The Humongous Book of Calculus Problems"
The section presents a series of problems involving factoring polynomial expressions
Problem 2.20

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This last expression is the closest to that expected by Kelley.
2.21

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Yes. But why did this pull out the common factors but not earlier with #2.20?
Let's try that again.

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Strange.

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I still don't see why Mathematica doesn't factor out the xy.
Let's move on.

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Good.

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Nope. Mathematica is not able to find the factors of this simple sum of two perfect cubes.

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Yes. Mathematica had no difficulty with this expression.

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Good. In general Mathematica seems to be able to handle most complex expressions, but there are a few that it misses. Weird.

Created by Mathematica  (August 19, 2007)