Lecture 2: Experimenting with Maple

Background Material

• Complex numbers
• The quadratic equation

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

• Programming in Maple.
• loops and conditionals
• list processing
• Generating random numbers
• Empirically determining the probability that a quadratic equation has real roots.
• Estimating the probability with an area calculation and determining the limiting probability
• Maple commands - solve, type, int, limit

Maple worksheets and documentation

Getting Started Guide.
Maple User Manual.

• quadratic.mw - Maple worksheet illustrating maple programming and the use of maple to perform mathematical experimentation (investigation of the probability that a quadratic equation has real roots)

Resources

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

Assignments

1. assign1.mw - first assignment to be handed in.
   Created: Oct. 20, 2005 by jjohnson@cs.drexel.edu