Hi, I'm trying to solve a set of simultaneous equations, and the solutions I get are expressions of _Z. I'd be most grateful if anyone could explain what this means.

I have a rather complex statistical problem and was wondering if Maple would be able help. For my Oxford University thesis I have conducted a survey which seeks to estimate respondents' values for a certain preference parameter (relative risk aversion, RRA). This parameter is continous, but my data is categorical, i.e. the parameter value of each respondent is only estimated as a range. There are eight such categories. What makes it more complex still, is that the data is censored. The lowest category has no lower limit, and the highest category has no upper limit. The actual categories are as follows:

I'm completely new to maple, and I'm trying to solve some equations that have no algebraic solution but should be straightforward to solve with numerical methods. I'd be most grateful if anyone could offer some advice on how to do this. For example, I'd like to solve the following two equations for p: 2^(1-p)+(1-x)^(1-p)/(1-p) and x^(2-p)-y^(2-p))/(x-y) = (a^(2-p)-b^(2-p))/(a-b) The attached worksheet contains my unsuccessful attempts. View 4985_equations.mw on MapleNet