Generating a polynomial equation

[scidam]

You can describe polynomial without classes. Any polynomial is defined by its coefficients, so standard data types such as tuple or list can describe a polynomial.

my_polynomial = (1, 2, 3) # we assume that we have a polynomial:  1*x^0 + 2*x + 3*x^2

Further, we need some helper functions that will allow to perform basic operations over such polynomials.

We wish to print the polynomial in human readable form:

def print_polynomial(p, default_argument_name='x'):
    """Print polynomial

    p: a list or a tuple, polynomial coefficients
    """
    result = ''
    for power, coefficient in enumerate(p):
        result += '{}*{}^{} +'.format(coefficient, default_argument_name, power)
    # This is dirty implementation, it doesn't handle +/- signs properly
    print(result[:-1])  # drop `+`

Also, we would like to calculate value of the polynomial at specified point. So, we need to define
a function, e.g. get_polynomial_value,

def get_polynomial_value(p, x):
    """Evaluates polynomial at specified point
    """
    result = 0.0
    for power, coefficient in enumerate(p):
        result += coefficient * x ** power
    return result

You can also wish to be able to export polynomial to Tex/LaTex-format. Thats easy, just write a helper function for this.

def export_to_latex(p):
    """Returns latex-formatted representation of a polynomial"""
    result = r""
    for power, coefficient in enumerate(p):
        result += r'{coefficient}\cdot x^{}'.format(coefficient, power) + '+' if (power != len(coefficient)) else '' # drop `+` for the last polynomial term
    return result

I didn't test these function. You can definitely improve them (e.g. an issue with +/- handling when printing a polynomial), define you own help functions, e.g. define add_polynomials(p1, p2), multiply_polynomials(p1,p1) etc.