Finding roots of polynomial functions

A common task in many business and computing subjects is the calculation of minima and maxima values. This task requires finding the roots of first and second order derivatives, which can be done conveniently using Maxima or Octave scripts. For example, consider this function:

• y = 3x² - 3x - 6

Polynomial functions are expressed quite literally in Maxima scripts. They use the realroots() command to calculate real valued roots.

p: 3*x^2-3*x-6; realroots( p );

Alternatively, an Octave script could also find the real valued roots. The main difference is that Octave uses a vector of the coefficients in descending order to represent a polynomial function.

p = [3 -3 -6]; roots( p )