mathsy question: finding max of curve from discrete points seems to have a lot of answers to this - a couple of them including Math::Polynomial solutions. Could it be perchance that they / you / your professors are related? :)

As for a 'nice' way of doing algebra in perl, it's pretty much the same as doing algebra in any other language - try taking some 'C' code and sticking a $ in front of everything :). This being a maths question, there's not really going to be a solution that doesn't involve maths somehow.

If you come up with some code, feel free to post it here and I'm sure you'll get a lot of useful suggestions...but do have a go first. Hack something up - anything that looks like you've spent some brainpower yourself on the question.

Cheers, Ben.