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From: "Bruno Luong" <b.luong@fogale.fr>
Newsgroups: comp.soft-sys.matlab
Subject: Re: Common tangent
Date: Wed, 28 Nov 2007 15:04:11 +0000 (UTC)
Organization: FOGALE nanotech
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"John D'Errico" <woodchips@rochester.rr.com> wrote in
message <fijhn9$bfi$1@fred.mathworks.com>...
> 
> Also in the event of the optimization, recognize
> that while an optimizer can solve the problem,
> this may well have multiple local minima, or it
> may have no true solution at all. You will need
> good starting values, or you will need to start
> off the optimizer at multiple points, taking the
> best overall solution.
> 

John,

Why you are suggesting optimization tool for such problem
with all the eventual drawbacks (e.g., metric tbd, i.e.,
closest notion tbd, local minima, hard to find all the
solutions, hard to distinguish whereas a numerical solution
is a real solution)?

It seems to me optimization is a too complex tool and not
suitable for such problem. I would avoid it all together.

There is much better way to find intersection of two curves
in the plane.

Bruno