Solving Logical Combinations of Equations
When you give a list of equations to
Solve, it assumes that you want all the equations to be satisfied simultaneously. It is also possible to give
Solve more complicated logical combinations of equations.
Solve assumes that the equations
and
are simultaneously valid.
| Out[1]= |  |
Here is an alternative form, using the logical connective
explicitly.
| Out[2]= |  |
This specifies that
either 
or 
.
Solve gives two solutions for
, corresponding to these two possibilities.
| Out[3]= |  |
Solve gives three solutions to this equation.
| Out[4]= |  |
If you explicitly include the assertion that
, one of the previous solutions is suppressed.
| Out[5]= |  |
Here is a slightly more complicated example. Note that the precedence of
is lower than the precedence of
, so the equation is interpreted as
, not
.
| Out[6]= |  |
When you use
Solve, the final results you get are in the form of transformation rules. If you use
Reduce or
Eliminate, on the other hand, then your results are logical statements, which you can manipulate further.
This gives a logical statement representing the solutions of the equation
.
| Out[7]= |  |
This finds values of
which satisfy
but do not satisfy the statement representing the solutions of
.
| Out[8]= |  |
The logical statements produced by
Reduce can be thought of as representations of the solution set for your equations. The logical connectives
,
and so on then correspond to operations on these sets.
| eqns1||eqns2 | union of solution sets |
| eqns1&&eqns2 | intersection of solution sets |
| !eqns | complement of a solution set |
| Implies[eqns1,eqns2] | the part of  that contains  |
Operations on solution sets.
You may often find it convenient to use special notations for logical connectives, as discussed in
"Operators".
The input uses special notations for
Implies and
Or.
| Out[9]= |  |
