Expand "collect and combine like terms" to be more general (addition)

[evykassirer]

right now adding like terms looks like: x^2 + x + 3 + x^2 + 2 => ... => 2x^2 + x + 5 and only works with polynomial terms (where a polynomial term is defined as a symbol like x, with maybe an exponent, and maybe a coefficient)

it would be great if we had one for non-polynomial terms too

e.g. (x + 3)(x+3) + (x+3)(x+3) => 2*(x+3)(x+3) => ... will have one case of distribution instead of doing the leftmost one and then the rightmost one (which is what we currently do)

[nitin42]

I can try this and will let you know if I am done. And I think we'll have to create a new check to make a case for non-polynomial terms too. Right ?

[evykassirer]

sounds good! I'll mark you as assigned

you should be updating collectAndCombineSearch (or making another tree search similar to it) to handle non-polynomial terms. let me know if you have any questions!

[nitin42]

Ok but I'll start working on it soon as possible (pending college stuff). Hope you don't mind !!

[kevinbarabash]

Would factoring out a common factor also fall under this issue? For example:

x^3 + 2x^2 + x => x(x^2 + 2x + 1)

[evykassirer]

no, I think that would go under our Factoring module

#104 is what we have so far, this case isn't covered yet

(tbd how it's gonna fit in with simplifyExpression... it's hard cause sometimes it's best to leave it in expanded form and sometimes it's best to leave it in factored form, and sometimes factoring lets you cancel things out..... yeah we're gonna have to figure out how this will work)