Simplest way to solve mathematical equations in Python

Question

I want to solve a set of equations, linear, or sometimes quadratic. I don\'t have a specific problem, but often, I have been in this situation often.

It is simple to

Answer 1

It depends on your needs:

If you want an interactive graphical interface, then sage is probably the best solution.

If you want to avoid using a graphical interface, but you still want to do computer algebra, then sympy or maxima may cover your needs. (sympy looks very promising, but it still have a long way to go before they can replace mathematica).

If you don't really need symbolic algrebra, but you need a way to program with matrices, solve differential equations, and minimize functions, then scipy or octave are excelent starting points.

Answer 2

For reference: Wolfram Alpha's solution:

a-1000!=0,   b = (1000 (a-500))/(a-1000),   c = (-a^2+1000 a-500000)/(a-1000)

In python, using sympy's solver module (note that it assumes all equations are set equal to zero):

>>> import sympy
>>> a, b, c = sympy.symbols('a, b, c')
>>> sympy.solve([a + b + c - 1000, a**2 + b**2 - c**2], b, c)
[(1000*(a - 500)/(a - 1000), (-a**2 + 1000*a - 500000)/(a - 1000))]

And of course, a != 1000, as a-1000 is the denominator of the two equations.

Answer 3

Well, I just googled into this page by accident. I see many suggestions regarding this and that software tool, but does any tool actually provide an answer? The actual answer is:

[a,b,c] = [200,375,425]

How did I get this? By writing a quick program in the Maxima programming language to find it via "brute force" searching. It only took about 10 minutes to write, seeing as how I'm familiar with the Maxima language. It took a few seconds for the program to run. Here is the program:

euler_solve():= block ( [ a, b, A, B, end:1000],

for a thru end do
    (
    for b thru end do
        (
        c: 1000 -a -b,
        if c < 0 then
            b:end
        else if a^2 + b^2 = c^2 then
            (
            A:a,
            B:b,
            a:end,
            b:end
            )
        )
    ),
return( [A,B,c])
);

You can just cut and paste the above code into the wxMaxima user interface, which I run under Ubuntu and not MS Windows. Then you just enter the function name: euler_solve(), hit return, wait a few seconds, and out pops the answer. This particular kind of problem is so simple that you could use any general-purpose programming language to do the search.

Answer 4

A free web-service for solving large-scale systems of nonlinear equations (1 million+) is APMonitor.com. There is a browser interface and an API to Python / MATLAB. The API to Python is a single script (apm.py) that is available for download from the apmonitor.com homepage. Once the script is loaded into a Python code, it gives the ability to solve problems of:

• Nonlinear equations
• Differential and algebraic equations
• Least squares model fitting
• Moving horizon estimation
• Nonlinear model predictive control
• etc.

For the new user, the APM Python software has a Google Groups forum where a user can post questions. There are bi-weekly webinars that showcase optimization problems in operations research and engineering.

Below is an example of an optimization problem (hs71.apm).

Model

  Variables

    x[1] = 1, >=1, <=5

    x[2] = 5, >=1, <=5

    x[3] = 5, >=1, <=5

    x[4] = 1, >=1, <=5

  End Variables



  Equations

    x[1] * x[2] * x[3] * x[4] > 25

    x[1]^2 + x[2]^2 + x[3]^2 + x[4]^2 = 40



    minimize  x[1] * x[4] * (x[1]+x[2]+x[3]) + x[3]

  End Equations

End Model

The optimization problem is solved with the following Python script:

# Import

from apm import *

# Select server

server = 'http://xps.apmonitor.com'

# Application name

app = 'eqn'

# Clear previous application

apm(server,app,'clear all')

# Load model file

apm_load(server,app,'hs71.apm')

# Option to select solver (1=APOPT, 2=BPOPT, 3=IPOPT)

apm_option(server,app,'nlc.solver',3)

# Solve on APM server

solver_output = apm(server,app,'solve')


# Display solver output

print solver_output


# Retrieve results

results = apm_sol(server,app)

# Display results

print '--- Results of the Optimization Problem ---'

print results

# Display Results in Web Viewer 

url = apm_var(server,app)

print "Opened Web Viewer: " + url

Answer 5

Take a look at this:

http://openopt.org/FuncDesignerDoc#Solving_systems_of_nonlinear_equations

It is extremely easy to use and quite powerful

Answer 6

I don't think there is a unified way of dealing with both linear and quadratic (or generally nonlinear) equations simultaneously. With linear systems, python has bindings to linear algebra and matrix packages. Nonlinear problems tend to be solved on a case by case basis.