Last updated September 22, 2006
Maple
Maple is a mathematics and computer algebra software package that we
will use from time to time in this course. It can be downloaded from
Dartmouth's Download page for both Mac OS X and
Windows 2000 and XP Professional. Note that if you
download Maple from Dartmouth, you must have
KeyAccess installed on your computer, as well as a
connection to the Dartmouth network, to run Maple.
Maple is pretty user-friendly, so it should not be too difficult to
figure out how to do what you want to do, provided you make use of its
help menus. Here are some things to keep in mind when you use Maple
(From now on, Maple commands will be in monospace font):
- You can ask Maple for help with certain functions by typing
? followed by the name of the function with which you want
help as Maple Input (displayed in red following a >) and then
hitting "enter" or "return." For example, if you want help with the
"Matrix" function, type ?Matrix and hit enter.
- Be sure to end every command you give Maple with a semicolon
; (otherwise, you will receive a warning message). To
suppress Maple output, end your command with a colon : rather
than a semicolon.
- After opening a Maple worksheet that you've saved, you must hit
enter through every command in the saved worksheet (in other words,
put your cursor in the middle of each command and hit "enter") if you
want Maple to have those commands in its memory.
- You can use the % command when you do a computation in
the previous line and want to do something more with it. For example,
if you added 25 and 30 in one line, and then you want to divide this
sum by 5, your Maple Input would look as follows:
> 25 + 30;
55
> %/5;
11
Most of our work in this class will require the Linear Algebra
package, which you input as with(LinearAlgebra);. The code
for the Maple worksheets we use in class will be posted on this page
throughout the term. Feel free to use Maple to do your homework, but
make sure you show all the steps you use; otherwise, if you give an
incorrect solution, you will get a 0.