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Stacked fractions

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  Stacked fractions paulvonhippel at yahoo <paulvonhippel@yahoo.com> - 2011-07-07 11:47 +0000
    Re: Stacked fractions paulvonhippel at yahoo <paulvonhippel@yahoo.com> - 2011-07-08 08:54 +0000
    Re: Stacked fractions Richard Fateman <fateman@cs.berkeley.edu> - 2011-07-08 08:59 +0000

#3558 — Stacked fractions

Another question, along the same lines. Some of the solutions
Mathematica gives me include compound fractions of the form ((A/B)-C)/
D. Again it seems to me most authors would rewrite this as a simpler
fraction -- can I get Mathematica to do the same?

Where these questions are coming from: Mathematica is now compatible
with Word's equation editor, so it's become more desirable for
Mathematica's output to look close to what's conventional in a paper.

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#3564

Thanks to two private messages for suggesting the Simplify function.
Simplify does work for the simple problem I posed, but not for the
more complicated problem I was thinking about.

The problem I proposed is solved by Simplify:
 ((A/B) - C)/D // Simplify
 (A - B C)/(B D)

But my real problem doesn't solve as easily,
  (-1 - (2 Gamma[n/2]^2)/Gamma[1/2 (-1 + n)]^2)/n
even if assumptions are imposed:
  FullSimplify[%, {n >= 2, n \[Element] Integers}]

Many thanks for any suggestions.

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#3576

On 7/7/2011 4:47 AM, paulvonhippel at yahoo wrote:
> Another question, along the same lines. Some of the solutions
> Mathematica gives me include compound fractions of the form ((A/B)-C)/
> D. Again it seems to me most authors would rewrite this as a simpler
> fraction -- can I get Mathematica to do the same?
>
> Where these questions are coming from: Mathematica is now compatible
> with Word's equation editor, so it's become more desirable for
> Mathematica's output to look close to what's conventional in a paper.
>

While it may be possible to get Mathematica to generate exactly the
displays that you want in each of the particular situations by dint of
some hackery, you will never be able to anticipate ALL such difference
between a human's preference and the computer-generated simplified form.

If you want a particular ordering (etc) of terms for a document, I
suggest you learn how to use the editor (for you, Word's equation
editor, I guess), to move things around, change fonts, etc.

You can try to thwart Mathematica's notions of evaluation,
simplification, display, but it is like teaching a pig to sing.



{=93Never try to teach a pig to sing; it wastes your time and it annoys
the pig.=94 (Robert Heinlein)}

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