Question

If solve does not return any solution, what does it imply?

(a) The equation has no definite solution

(b) The equation has a solution for a specific interval

(c) The equation may be solvable but the function ‘solve’ cannot produce a solution

(d) There is no function ‘solve’

The question was asked in examination.

This intriguing question comes from Solving Equations topic in chapter MATLAB Basics of MATLAB

Answer 1

Correct choice is (c) The equation may be solvable but the function ‘solve’ cannot produce a solution

To elaborate: It may so happen that an equation may not be solvable but due to some mistake, the function solve0 has encountered an argument which is an equation whose Left hand side could never be equal to the right hand side. It may also happen that some separate solution is present but the function cannot produce the solutions. We need to check separately for such cases by applying some other methods of solving equations though, generally, this does not happen.