Symbolic simplify not cancelling fractions

I'm trying to use the symbolic simplify function, but I'm not getting the output that I would like. I am getting;

(8*cos(t) - 8*cos^3(t))/4

The code I am using is;

symbols = expand(symbols)
symbols = simplify(symbols, 'Steps', 100);

Is there any way to cancel the factor of 4 in both the numerator and denominator?

Many thanks.

Answer 1

[John D'Errico]

Works fine for me, with nothing special done at all. Of course, I had to fix your mistaken syntax.

(8*cos(t) - 8*cos(t)^3)/4
ans =
2*cos(t) - 2*cos(t)^3

cos^3(t) is NOT valid syntax in MATLAB.

[Thomas Prideaux-Ghee]

I am simplifying a far more complicated expression (that exceeds the length limit on the Matlab console). My final result contains is what I posted above (but of course without the syntax error).

It turns out that running simplify again (like you suggested) works - for some reason the first simplify wasn't doing enough! Thanks :)