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An Overview of the True Quintic Formula...and Why You Should Never Use It

MichaelMaths 14,008 2 years ago
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Many people know that the general quintic equation is unsolvable in radicals from Abel-Ruffini theorem, however, you can find a solution to it by using polynomial transformations and different non-elementary means. This video outlines one possible solution method using power series and hypergeometric functions. However, essentially all of this is a proof of concept since this solution, along with many others, is simply way too long and complicated to be used in practice, especially in back-substituted form, and it even suffers computationally with symbolic coefficients taking up so much space. Timecodes: 0:00 - Intro and transformation (Let principal's y² coefficient be t instead of u**) 11:40 - Bring-Jerrard principal root 20:45 - Bring-Jerrard remaining roots (Must have u ≠ 0, could also divide out principal soln. and solve the remaining quartic**) 30:08 - Back-substitution and closer (Elliptic soln. has actually been written back-subbed for the original quintic, though still not with the original coefficients**) Sources and other tidbits: The quintic equation: https://mathworld.wolfram.com/QuinticEquation.html#:~:text=Unlike%20quadratic%2C%20cubic%2C%20and%20quartic,Abel's%20impossibility%20theorem)%20and%20Galois Check if a quintic is solvable in radicals: https://math.stackexchange.com/a/1904919/833563 Tschirnhaus transformation: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tschirnhaus_transformation (Note that this transformation can also be rational, not just polynomial**) Resultant of two polynomials: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resultant (Also see Newton's Power Sum Identities for an alternate way to get coeffs**) Transforming a quintic guide: https://math.stackexchange.com/a/542228 Lagrange inversion/reversion theorem: https://mathworld.wolfram.com/LagrangeInversionTheorem.html Bring radical: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bring_radical Generalized hypergeometric function: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generalized_hypergeometric_function Alternate differential resolvent solution: https://math.stackexchange.com/a/3789323 Alternate elliptic function solution: https://math.stackexchange.com/a/541027 Overall quintic solution summary: https://arxiv.org/pdf/math/0005026.pdf Wolfram Mathematica guide to solving the quintic: https://web.archive.org/web/20140701060849/http://library.wolfram.com/examples/quintic/ Passare-Tsikh solution to the principal quintic (series only, not analytic continuation): https://arxiv.org/abs/0910.2957 (If you're insane, modular functions can solve any polynomial equation: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomae%27s_formula) Twitter - https://twitter.com/michaelmaths_ Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/michaelmaths_

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