I have a function which I would like to maximize over an independent variable range, say a->b. How would I do this in Mathematica? The documentation does not provide an answer.
The functions you are looking for are Maximize and NMaximize (similarly, there is Minimize and NMinimize). Since you do not provide any details about the function itself, I shall call it f and assume that it takes one variable. Then to maximize over a given range, you specify both the function and the range, as follows
Maximize[{ f[x], a <= x <= b}, x]
or, if symbolic maximization is difficult to do, you can have it numerically maximized using the same form
NMaximize[{ f[x], a <= x <= b}, x]
For minimization, replace as appropriate.
Related
I'm puzzled by what I think is a mistake in a partial derivative I'm having Mathematica do for me.
Specifically, this is what I have:
Derivative I'd like to take
I'm trying to take the partial derivative of the following w.r.t. the variable θ (apologies for the formatting):
f=(1/4)(-4e((1+θ)/2)ψ+eN((1+θ)/2)ψ+eN((1+θ)/2-θd)ψ)-s
But the solution Mathematica produces seems very different from the one I get when I take the derivative myself. While Mathematica says the partial derivative of f w.r.t. θ is:
(1/4)eψ(N-2)
By hand, I get and am quite confident the correct answer is instead:
(1/4)eψ(N(1-d)-2)
That is, Mathematica is producing something that drops the variable d when it is differentiating. I've explored different functions that take a derivative in Mathematica, and the possibility that maybe some of the variables I'm using (such as d) might be protected or otherwise special, but I can't say that I know why the answer's so off. This is the first time in the notebook that d appears, so it is not set to 0. For context, I'm trying to confirm that the derivative of the function is positive for values of the variables in certain ranges, and we have d>0 and d<(1/2). Doing this all by hand works but I'm trying to confirm with Mathematica as I will be dealing with more complicated functions and need to make sure I'm having Mathematica produce the right derivatives.
Your didn't add spaces in eN and θd, so it thinks they're some other 2-character variables.
Adding spaces between them gives your expected result:
f[θ,e,N,ψ,d,s] = (1/4) (-4 e ((1+θ)/2) ψ + e N ((1+θ)/2) ψ + e N ((1+θ)/2 - θ d) ψ) - s;
D[f[θ, e, N, ψ, d, s], θ] // FullSimplify
(* 1/4 e (-2 + N - d N) ψ *)
I have a differential equation A*dx/dt + B(y-y0) = 0
Where x is a very complicated function of y.
How can I use Mathematica to rearrange y to get a function x in order to solve this?
Thanks
There are two or three different problems here that you might be asking:
Option 1: The subject line
First, if you really do have a function f[x] defined and you want to rearrange it, you would be doing something like this:
f[x_]=2+x+x^2;
Solve[y==f[x],x]
However, even here you should notice that inverse functions are not necessarily unique. There are two functions given, and the domain of each is only for y>=7/4.
Option 2: Solving a DE
Now, the equation you give is a differential equation. That is not the same as "rearranging a function y=f[x] into x=g[y]" because there are derivatives involved.
Mathematica has a built-in differential-equation solver:
DSolve[a y'[t] + b (y[t] - y0) == 0, y[t], t]
That will give you a function (in terms of constants $a,b,y_0$) that is the answer, and it will include the unspecified constant of integration.
Your system seems to refer to two functions, x(t) and y(t). You cannot solve one equation for two variables, so it is impossible to solve this (Mathematica or otherwise) without more information.
Option 3: Rearranging an expression
As a third alternative, if you are trying to rearrange this equation without solving the differential equation, you can do that:
Solve[a x'[t] + b(y[t]-y0)==0,x'[t]]
This will give you $x'(t)$ in terms of the other constants and the function $y(t)$, but in order to integrate this (i.e. to solve the differential equation) you will need to know more about y[t].
I aim to calculate and preserve the results from the maximization of a function with two arguments and one exogenous parameter, when the maximum can not be derived (in closed form) by maximize. For instance, let
f[x_,y_,a_]=Max[0,Min[a-y,1-x-y]
be the objective function where a is positive. The maximization shall take place over [0,1]^2, therefore I set
m[a_]=Maximize[{f[x, y, a], 0 <= x <= 1 && 0 <= y <= 1 && 0 <= a}, {x,y}]
Obviously m can be evaluated at any point a and it is therefore possible to plot the maximizing x by employing
Plot[x /. m[a][[2]], {a, 0.01, 1}]
As I need to do several plots and further derivations containing the optimal solutions x and y (which of course are functions of a), i would like to preserve/save the results from the optimization for further use. Is there an elegant way to do this, or do I have to write some kind of loop to extract the values myself?
Now that I've seen the full text of your comment on my original comment, I suspect that you do understand the differences between Set and SetDelayed well enough. I think what you may be looking for is memoisation, sometimes implemented a bit like this;
f[x_,y_] := f[x,y] = Max[0,Min[a-y,1-x-y]]
When you evaluate, for example f[3,4] for the first time it will evaluate to the entire expression to the right of the :=. The rhs is the assignment f[3,4] = Max[0,Min[a-y,1-x-y]]. Next time you evaluate f[3,4] Mathematica already has a value for it so doesn't need to recompute it, it just recalls it. In this example the stored value would be Max[0,Min[a-4,-6]] of course.
I remain a little uncertain of what you are trying to do so this answer may not be any use to you at all.
Simple approach
results = Table[{x, y, a} /. m[a][[2]], {a, 0.01, 1, .01}]
ListPlot[{#[[3]], #[[1]]} & /# results, Joined -> True]
(The Set = is ok here so long as 'a' is not previosly defined )
If you want to utilise Plot[]s automatic evaluation take a look at Reap[]/Sow[]
{p, data} = Reap[Plot[x /. Sow[m[a]][[2]], {a, 0.01, 1}]];
Show[p]
(this takes a few minutes as the function output is a mess..).
hmm try this again: assuming you want x,y,a and the minimum value:
{p, data} = Reap[Plot[x /. Sow[{a, m[a]}][[2, 2]], {a, 0.01, .1}]];
Show[p]
results = {#[[1]], x /. #[[2, 2]], y /. #[[2, 2]], #[[2, 1]]} & /# data[[1]]
BTW Your function appears to be independent of x over some ranges which is why the plot is a mess..
I hope this hasn't been asked before, if so I apologize.
EDIT: For clarity, the following notation will be used: boldface uppercase for matrices, boldface lowercase for vectors, and italics for scalars.
Suppose x0 is a vector, A and B are matrix functions, and f is a vector function.
I'm looking for the best way to do the following iteration scheme in Mathematica:
A0 = A(x0), B0=B(x0), f0 = f(x0)
x1 = Inverse(A0)(B0.x0 + f0)
A1 = A(x1), B1=B(x1), f1 = f(x1)
x2 = Inverse(A1)(B1.x1 + f1)
...
I know that a for-loop can do the trick, but I'm not quite familiar with Mathematica, and I'm concerned that this is the most efficient way to do it. This is a justified concern as I would like to define a function u(N):=xNand use it in further calculations.
I guess my questions are:
What's the most efficient way to program the scheme?
Is RecurrenceTable a way to go?
EDIT
It was a bit more complicated than I tought. I'm providing more details in order to obtain a more thorough response.
Before doing the recurrence, I'm having problems understanding how to program the functions A, B and f.
Matrices A and B are functions of the time step dt = 1/T and the space step dx = 1/M, where T and M are the number of points in the {0 < x < 1, 0 < t} region. This is also true for vector the function f.
The dependance of A, B and f on x is rather tricky:
A and B are upper and lower triangular matrices (like a tridiagonal matrix; I suppose we can call them multidiagonal), with defined constant values on their diagonals.
Given a point 0 < xs < 1, I need to determine it's representative xn in the mesh (the closest), and then substitute the nth row of A and B with the function v( x) (transposed, of course), and the nth row of f with the function w( x).
Summarizing, A = A(dt, dx, xs, x). The same is true for B and f.
Then I need do the loop mentioned above, to define u( x) = step[T].
Hope I've explained myself.
I'm not sure if it's the best method, but I'd just use plain old memoization. You can represent an individual step as
xstep[x_] := Inverse[A[x]](B[x].x + f[x])
and then
u[0] = x0
u[n_] := u[n] = xstep[u[n-1]]
If you know how many values you need in advance, and it's advantageous to precompute them all for some reason (e.g. you want to open a file, use its contents to calculate xN, and then free the memory), you could use NestList. Instead of the previous two lines, you'd do
xlist = NestList[xstep, x0, 10];
u[n_] := xlist[[n]]
This will break if n > 10, of course (obviously, change 10 to suit your actual requirements).
Of course, it may be worth looking at your specific functions to see if you can make some algebraic simplifications.
I would probably write a function that accepts A0, B0, x0, and f0, and then returns A1, B1, x1, and f1 - say
step[A0_?MatrixQ, B0_?MatrixQ, x0_?VectorQ, f0_?VectorQ] := Module[...]
I would then Nest that function. It's hard to be more precise without more precise information.
Also, if your procedure is numerical, then you certainly don't want to compute Inverse[A0], as this is not a numerically stable operation. Rather, you should write
A0.x1 == B0.x0+f0
and then use a numerically stable solver to find x1. Of course, Mathematica's LinearSolve provides such an algorithm.
I have a basic problem in Mathematica which has puzzled me for a while. I want to take the m'th derivative of x*Exp[t*x], then evaluate this at x=0. But the following does not work correct. Please share your thoughts.
D[x*Exp[t*x], {x, m}] /. x -> 0
Also what does the error mean
General::ivar: 0 is not a valid variable.
Edit: my previous example (D[Exp[t*x], {x, m}] /. x -> 0) was trivial. So I made it harder. :)
My question is: how to force it to do the derivative evaluation first, then do substitution.
As pointed out by others, (in general) Mathematica does not know how to take the derivative an arbitrary number of times, even if you specify that number is a positive integer.
This means that the D[expr,{x,m}] command remains unevaluated and then when you set x->0, it's now trying to take the derivative with respect to a constant, which yields the error message.
In general, what you want is the m'th derivative of the function evaluated at zero.
This can be written as
Derivative[m][Function[x,x Exp[t x]]][0]
or
Derivative[m][# Exp[t #]&][0]
You then get the table of coefficients
In[2]:= Table[%, {m, 1, 10}]
Out[2]= {1, 2 t, 3 t^2, 4 t^3, 5 t^4, 6 t^5, 7 t^6, 8 t^7, 9 t^8, 10 t^9}
But a little more thought shows that you really just want the m'th term in the series, so SeriesCoefficient does what you want:
In[3]:= SeriesCoefficient[x*Exp[t*x], {x, 0, m}]
Out[3]= Piecewise[{{t^(-1 + m)/(-1 + m)!, m >= 1}}, 0]
The final output is the general form of the m'th derivative. The PieceWise is not really necessary, since the expression actually holds for all non-negative integers.
Thanks to your update, it's clear what's happening here. Mathematica doesn't actually calculate the derivative; you then replace x with 0, and it ends up looking at this:
D[Exp[t*0],{0,m}]
which obviously is going to run into problems, since 0 isn't a variable.
I'll assume that you want the mth partial derivative of that function w.r.t. x. The t variable suggests that it might be a second independent variable.
It's easy enough to do without Mathematica: D[Exp[t*x], {x, m}] = t^m Exp[t*x]
And if you evaluate the limit as x approaches zero, you get t^m, since lim(Exp[t*x]) = 1. Right?
Update: Let's try it for x*exp(t*x)
the mth partial derivative w.r.t. x is easily had from Wolfram Alpha:
t^(m-1)*exp(t*x)(t*x + m)
So if x = 0 you get m*t^(m-1).
Q.E.D.
Let's see what is happening with a little more detail:
When you write:
D[Sin[x], {x, 1}]
you get an expression in with x in it
Cos[x]
That is because the x in the {x,1} part matches the x in the Sin[x] part, and so Mma understands that you want to make the derivative for that symbol.
But this x, does NOT act as a Block variable for that statement, isolating its meaning from any other x you have in your program, so it enables the chain rule. For example:
In[85]:= z=x^2;
D[Sin[z],{x,1}]
Out[86]= 2 x Cos[x^2]
See? That's perfect! But there is a price.
The price is that the symbols inside the derivative get evaluated as the derivative is taken, and that is spoiling your code.
Of course there are a lot of tricks to get around this. Some have already been mentioned. From my point of view, one clear way to undertand what is happening is:
f[x_] := x*Exp[t*x];
g[y_, m_] := D[f[x], {x, m}] /. x -> y;
{g[p, 2], g[0, 1]}
Out:
{2 E^(p t) t + E^(p t) p t^2, 1}
HTH!