MAPLE is a commercial symbolic algebra system which allows computations in many fields of mathematics and engineering. Packages can be used to extend the MAPLE language in areas where the basic language is weak.
UMBC appears to have a site license for Maple (OIT pages [1] [2]). As a result Maple is available in computer labs, on remotely accessible servers and for home use by faculty and staff.
Maple is also available on UMBC servers which are accessible across the internet. Any UMBC employee or student has access using the account name and password they normally use for UMBC e-mail.
@umbc.edu email account you have access to Maple on the
server gl.umbc.edu. Details of logging into this server are
here. Once you have logged in you can run
Maple by typing the command maple followed by pressing the
return key.
http://my.umbc.edu, where
there should be a link to download the program.
At the MAPLE command prompt (which usually is a "greater
than" sign, ">") type the command to be run, ending
with a semicolon, and then press the Return
key to have MAPLE evaluate the command. As a simple
example, if you want to add two integers type:
3 + 12;
Intermediate values can be saved by giving them a name
and assigning them a value with the ":="
operator. If the following two commands are run the
second output will be 1:
thesum := 3 + 12;
thesum - 14;
Maple is very careful about exact values. Exact values are things like symbols and integers. Thus sin(3) is an exact value and when you evaluate sin(3) you get sin(3) back as an answer. Contrast this with the fact that 3.0 is an approximate value and thus sin(3) evaluates to the approximate value 0.14122. The evalf() operator will force a numerical evaluation.
> sin(3);
sin(3)
> sin(3.0);
.1411200081
> evalf(sin(3));
.1411200081
When you are done with MAPLE, type the command quit;
(remembering to include the semicolon) and press the return key.
A more extensive MAPLE tutorial is available at
www.mapleapps.com.
There are several ways to find help in MAPLE. You can search by
topic or by the specific MAPLE command (if you know it). In each
case the basic command used is
?topic.
This always works if the topic is an actual MAPLE command and
sometimes works if it is a general topic.
> ?matrix HELP FOR: matrices SYNOPSIS: - A matrix in Maple is represented as a two dimensional array with row and column indices indexed from 1. - Matrices can be input either directly, as a two dimensional array, or using the matrix command in the linear algebra package. For example, array(1..m,1..n); creates an empty m by n matrix. See array and linalg[matrix] for further details. etc...
This way of getting help will return the entire help entry for the
topic. If you are only interested in part of the entry you may use
one of the commands info, example or
related:
> example(matrix);
Examples:
> linalg[matrix](2,3,[x,y,z,a,b,c]);
[x y z]
[ ]
[a b c]
etc ...
> related(matrix); See Also: linalg[matrix], linalg, array, vector, evalm, print, map, type
Maple allows you to edit a command line you are working on. This is simple on the Windows/Mac interface, as you can simply move the mouse, click and type. You may also edit lines if you are working across a network connection. You can move forward or backward within the line by using the left and right arrow keys. The up and down arrows allow you to review and edit previously executed commands.
Command lines may also be edited with a subset of the emacs/pine/bash command set. Some of the recognized commands are listed here.
Maple allows you to to refer to a previous expression with
the percent sign, '%'. Thus, when these
two commands are run the output of the second command
will be 21:
4 + 10;
% + 7;
Older versions of Maple used the double quote, rather than the percent sign, for this operator.
Referring to expressions two or three back can be done with
the operators '%%' and '%%%'.