🚀 go-pugleaf

In the September 1992 issue of the Notices of the American Mathematical
Society, there is an article by Barry Simon comparing the performance of a
number of computer algebra systems, including REDUCE, on a set of problems
(the full reference to the article is: B. Simon, "Comparative CAS Reviews",
Notices of the AMS, 39 (1992) 700-710).  I have now placed a file of
REDUCE solutions to the test problems in the examples sublibrary of the
REDUCE network library with the name simon.base.  I plan to update that
file as we find better solutions to the problems, and install the updated
version as simon.tst.

REDUCE was of course unable to do any of the problems that involved
graphics.  However, it was the only system to complete all algebraic
problems. although some solutions were described by Simon as "hand
solutions", since they did not use straightforward calls to library
procedures.  In general REDUCE was as fast or faster than other systems
on purely algebraic problems, but was significantly slower on those
involving extensive floating point arithmetic.  The REDUCE developers
plan to address these weaknesses in future releases.

I would naturally appreciate any suggestions for improving the solutions.
In particular, the calculation of the Feigenbaum polynomial (problem 17)
is very time consuming at the moment.

Tony Hearn