Attached (sim.mpl) is a simple game simulation with data from last years World Series champion Red Sox. Bump up infolevel to see what's going on during a game (as shown below). In the "Maple Baseball" post I wanted to see if the number of runs our team was scoring was appropriate. Obviously, the rule of thumb, 3-hits = 1 run is poor at best. What I really want to find out is if there is a way to improve our scoring chances. The standard baseball batting-order uses the following heuristic:

• lead off with someone with a high on-base percentage (and who can maybe steal a base)
• next 2 are good contact hitters
• batter 4 is your "clean-up" hitter; someone with power
• etc.

f:=sin(t)*x*(1-x);
g:=cos(t)*x*(1-x);
plots[animate](plot,[[f,g],x=0..1],t=0..2*Pi);

This blog entry was created essentially for a possibility to post pictures in comments (where attachments are not allowed.)

OK, in posting a new blog, there is an "Attachment" section... So I could add the three GIFs. They don't show up in the preview, but they did come out when I actually posted...

>	sum((-2)^k, k=1..infinity);

 

 

>	_EnvFormal := true;

 

 

As moderator of the How Do I?? (Newbies) forum, I thought I would post some information for my viewers. As a somewhat "Newbie" to Maple myself, I thought I'd boast about how amazing I think Maple 10 is (and no... this is not just because I work for Maplesoft ;). My first experience using Maple was a year ago, when I started with Maple 9.5. As expected, like any scientific software, there was a learning curve that I had to conquer.

Wen-Xiu Ma recently asked in the maple-assist group,

How to color the following region?
a:=plot([t^2,t^3-1,t=-3..3):
b:=plot([t^3+1,t^2-3,t=-3..3):
c:=plot([t^2+2,t^5-4,t=-3..3):
display([a,b,c],view=[0..5,-3.5..11]);

Early this season, after the Maplesoft team came out on the wrong side of a 13-6 loss, we were frustrated by the team's inability to score more runs. The previous year we averaged 14 runs a game. This started me wondering, just how many runs can our team expect with a given lineup? Suppose you assume that it takes three hits in an inning to start scoring runs. Now, let's assume you have five .500 hitters coming up to bat. What is the probability that you'll get 3 hits among those five batters, thus scoring one run?

Joe Riel and Thomas Richard posted in their blogs solutions to the latest IBM Ponder This challenge and some related questions. From the name of the attached files, one can deduct that Thomas Richard is user No. 50 and Joe Riel is user No. 84. Being curious about my user number, I also decided to attach a worksheet.

A question was asked in the forums about series tests. I saw that this would also make an excellent weblog entry as well. In answer to the questions: How can I get Maple to determine if a series converges or diverges? and How can I obtain the general representation of a formal power series for a function? I offer the following advice:

RSS feeds allow people to easily keep track of updates to their favorite websites. Say that you have 50 websites that you check every day for updates. What if instead of going to each of those individual websites, you can simply load your RSS reader and see which websites have been updated at a glance.

To use RSS feeds you will need an RSS reader. Here are two pages that list many different readers: http://blogspace.com/rss/readers and http://allrss.com/rssreaders.html. My favorite reader is Bloglines which is a web based reader that allows me to view my RSS feeds at any computer with a web connection.

Here's a quick and dirty solution to the following task:
Arrange digits 1,...,9 so that the first two form a number divisible by 2, the first three form a number divisible by 3, etc..

See Joe Riel's blog for more information.

The standard Maple worksheet uses color to distinguish elements. This is convenient when viewed on the screen, however, when printing to a monochromatic printer, colored text frequently is too light. I prefer to have it printed as dark black. This tip describes one way to do that. The technique is to apply a previously created style file that specifies all the fonts as being black. The easiest way to do this is to first create a user style file that has has your default settings, then manually edit this file to change the foreground color of all fonts to black. You could manually change the colors using the Maple Format -> Styles submenu; however, doing so is more work than editing the file in an external editor.

Previously I described how to change the default zoom setting for the Maple gui by modifying the appropriate initialization file. Another useful setting to change is the default background color of the help browser. This is done by modifying, in the initialization file, the line HelpBGColor=. I set it to HelpBGColor=240 240 240, that gives a light gray background that is less harsh on my eyes. The three fields should be integers from 0 to 255; they correspond to the red, green, and blue components of the color.

A poster on comp.soft-sys.math.maple recently asked how to set the default zoom for worksheets to a non-standard value; the jump from 100% to 150% being rather large. Standard GUI This can be readily accomplished by modifying the proper Maple initialization file.

Linux

the file is ~/.maple10rc

Mac OS X

the file is Maple 10 Preferences in Library/Preferences under your user directory (thanks to Tim Lahey).

Windows

the file is Maple10.ini (not maple.ini). The maple help pages do not mention this file and I do not have Windows, so cannot check. I have received reports that it is located in the users subdirectory under the Maple installation directory, but also reports that it is in c:\Documents and Settings\JoeUser, where JoeUser is your user name. My advice, until this is cleared up, is to search for all instances of this file and use the newest one. Maple writes to this file whenever the gui exits, so the newest one should be the right one. You might send me a note on what you've found (along with which version of Maple you are using); I'll update this accordingly.

When I upgraded my Mac G5 from OS 10.3 to OS 10.4, the OS X versions of Maple (Maple 9.5 and Maple 10) continued to work. But the classic versions of Maple (Maple 7 and Maple Vr5) quit working. It turns out that the classic versions will run in OS 10.4 if the following files (perhaps from an old "System Folder") are moved into the "Extensions" folder of the active classic OS 9 "System Folder":

I've been completely unsatisfied with the Maple LaTeX output. So, with the help of Joe Riel on comp.soft-sys.math.maple, I've created a procedure to use instead of a call to the latex command called simpleLaTeX. I've attached to this entry a Maple 9.5 worksheet that contains the procedure and a sample of its use. I'd appreciate any feedback people might have or further suggestions. Please send me any modifications you might make to the procedure. It seems to work quite well for all the test expressions I've sent to it.