Ten commandments for good default expression simplification

• Authors: David R. Stoutemyer
• Venue: Journal of Symbolic Computation
• Year: 2011

This article provides goals for the design and improvement of default computer algebra expression simplification. These goals can also help users recognize and partially circumvent some limitations of their current computer algebra systems. Although motivated by computer algebra, many of the goals are also applicable to manual simplification, indicating what transformations are necessary and sufficient for good simplification when no particular canonical result form is required. After motivating the ten goals, the article then explains how the Altran partially factored form for rational expressions was extended for Derive and for the computer algebra in Texas Instruments products to help fulfill these goals. In contrast to the distributed Altran representation, this recursive partially factored semi-fraction form: *does not unnecessarily force common denominators, *discovers and preserves significantly more factors, *can represent general expressions, and *can produce an entire spectrum from fully factored over a common denominator through complete multivariate partial fractions, including a dense subset of all intermediate forms.