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Did I write this wrong? Just trying to isolate a variable, Wolfram stumped!

I'm trying to isolate y so I wrote: "solve for y, (1+t)^y = x(((1 + g)^(y+1) - 1)/ g)"

Y is in the exponents on both sides of the equation. It's really tough to isolate by hand but I thought Wolfram would isolate y easily. What did I do wrong?

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POSTED BY: Eric Shierman

It's a transcendental (as opposed to algebraic, e.g. polynomial) equation in y, and Mathematica simply does not know of a way to solve it for y.

Solve[(1 + t)^y == x*((1 + g)^(y + 1) - 1)/g, y]

During evaluation of In[55]:= Solve::nsmet: This system cannot be solved with the methods available to Solve. >>

Out[55]= Solve[(1 + t)^y == ((-1 + (1 + g)^(1 + y)) x)/g, y]

Wasn't for lack of trying...

What this means, among other things, is that you didn't do anything wrong, other than perhaps having expectations too high for what could be done here.

POSTED BY: Daniel Lichtblau
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