How do I expand a sum?

Question

I have a problem with Mathematica's symbolic manipulations. As an example, consider the following expression:

$$\sum _{i=1}^n -2 x_i \left(-a x_i-b+y_i\right)=0$$

How do I get Mathematica to expand it into this form:

$$-\sum _{i=1}^n x_i y_i +a \sum _{i=1}^n x_i^2+b \sum _{i=1}^n x_i=0$$

What I mean is: what functions do I apply to get the product to expand and the summation operator to distribute?

You are requesting two changes: first to Expand the products in the summation and second to Distribute the action of Sum over the addition. Consulting the help pages for Expand and Distribute will answer your question.

Artes · Accepted Answer · 2012-12-26 18:14:32Z

up vote 12 down vote accepted

Distribute @ Sum[-2 Subscript[x, i] (-a Subscript[x, i] - b + Subscript[y, i]) // Expand,
                 {i, n}] == 0

enter image description here

answered Dec 26 '12 at 18:14

Artes
19.3k23898

	thanks a lot :] – Misery Dec 26 '12 at 18:38
	How can one make the 2a and 2b factors come out in front of the sums? (and in general any variables that do not depend on the summation index)? – Andrei May 9 at 13:26
	One can play with pattern matching, e.g. let the resulting expression be `expr`, then `expr /. {Sum[Times[c_, d__], List[i_, n_]] :> c Sum[Times[d], List[i, n]]}` does what you want. In more general cases one can work with `ReplaceRepeated (//.)` and (or) restrict pattern like e.g. `c_?NumericQ`. – Artes May 9 at 14:09

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