Lecture 1: Course Overview and Introduction to Maple

Background Material

• Equations for Lines and Circles
• Solution of Systems of Linear Equations

Reading

• Maple Getting Started Guide
  
• New User's Tour (Quick Tour followed by Full Tour) - Go to "Help" menu and select new users
• Basic How To - Go to "Help" menu and select new users
  
• Introduction to Maple (online tutorial and help).
• Using Help - Go to the "Help" menu and select "Table of Contents" and look for the "Using Help" folder. Also see "Using Help" under the "Help Menu" within "Help System Menu Bars" in the "Menus" folder.
  
• Worksheet Management - Go to the "Help" menu and select "Table of Contents" and look for Overview in the "Worksheet Management" folder.
  

Topics

• Overview of the course.
• Objectives
• Topics
• Grading policy and expectations
• Introduction to Maple
• line.mw - Maple worksheet illustrating the worksheet interface, basic functionality, and things to watch out for.
• Maple worksheet interface
• Maple help facility
• Basic capabilities of Maple
• Variables, Values, and Names
• Arithmetic
• Symbolic vs. Numeric Computatio
• Plotting and Graphics
• Solving Equations with solve
• Watch Out
  • End with a semi-colon
  • Names vs. Values and Evaluation
  • Equal vs. Assignment
  • Dynamic Scope
  • Case Sensitivity
  • Answers you don't understand
  • Maple's assumptions might be different than yours
  • Maple is not perfect

Maple worksheets and documentation

Getting Started Guide.
Maple User Manual.

• line.mw - Maple worksheet illustrating the worksheet interface, basic functionality, and things to watch out for.

Resources

• www.maplesoft.com (Maplesoft Web site)
• www.mapleapps.com (Maple Application Center Web site)
• www.maple4students.com (Maple Student Center Web site)
  

Assignments

• Create a simple Maple worksheet and perform several computations.
• Use Maple's sum function to determine the formula for a geometric series.
• Compute the sum of 1/i^2 as i goes from 1 to infinity. also compute the partial sums of 1/i^2 as i goes from 1 to n for different values of n. Does this appear to be approaching the limiting sum returned by Maple (use evalf to get a numeric approximation to the symbolic answer Maple returned).