I've created a Maple help page, saved in a small hdb file, that describes the hierarchy of Maple's numerical types.  Insert it into the path assigned to ?libname.  Access the help page with ?numer-hier. To make it compact, I took some liberties with the notation.  Here is what it looks like

Peter Stone's Lectures about Math & using Maple: I always liked them, missed that
for a longer time (ok, had them filed to my disk) and now find them back on the web.

Eleven years ago, one of the Maplesoft developers sent around the office this Maple language port of the first example of obfuscated code here.

This code below is text, for insertion in 1D Maple Notation, and runs in

I am studying the Julia sets and Mandelbrot. I know how to generate them. I know how to animate a simple function in the real field but until now not able to animate the Julia sets and the Mandelbrot. Is there any user guide or examples that explaines how to animate these two things in 2-D or 3-D?  I already have the user manual guide and the advanced programming guide downloaded from maplesoft but they do not contain any information or examples about what I am looking for.

The program mint, bundled with Maple, is a very useful syntax checker and program analyzer.

As provided, `mint` works best with Maple program source when contained in plaintext files. Inside Maple itself there is a command maplemint which does some of the same tasks as the stand-alone program `mint`. Unfortunately `maplemint` is quite a bit weaker than `mint` is, for quite a selection of procedures. Also, `maplemint` doesn't have the sort of flexible control that `mint` provides through its optional calling parameters.

I had previously posted a Maple language procedure for the purpose of calling out to `mint` while inside Maple (Standard GUI, or other). Here it is below, cleaned up a little. Hopefully it now works better across multiple operating systems, and also provides its optional parameters better.

Our first article introduced Maple's polynomial data structure and explained how Maple spends a lot of time working with monomials. To multiply polynomials having n and m terms, Maple must construct, simplify, hash, and sort all nm pairwise products to determine what monomials are equal. This work is performed even if the result has far fewer than nm terms, making it a rather inefficient way to multiply large multivariate polynomials. This article describes a new data structure for multivariate polynomials that is being added to Maple for a future release.

9xyz  -  4yz  -  6xyz  -  8x  -  5

Maplesoft has just released the Maple 13.02 update. This update includes:

• Platform support: Windows® 7 is officially supported with Maple 13.02
• MATLAB® Connectivity: Improved performance, connectivity extended to MATLAB R2009b, and support for the MATLAB Link on 64-bit Macintosh® Intel® platforms
• Language packs: Expanded support for Traditional Chinese and improved Spanish translation
• Plotting: Improvements to EPS and PDF export and improvements to plotting on Macintosh
• Other enhancements: Improved event handling in dsolve/numeric, better handling of read-only documents on  Mac OS® X 10.6 (Intel), and improved support for multithreading

I noticed that maple's command Transpose can mean two different things:
 

ListTools

The Transpose function transposes a list of lists
 

LinearAlgebra

The Transpose function computes the transpose of a Matrix, Vector, or scalar.
 

To highligt this I have selected two examples:

(As perhaps many of you do?) I really enjoy the webcomic xkcd. In a fit of silliness I decided to write my latest Maplesoft blog post about velociraptor math... :)  Click here if you're interested.

Stephanie
Maplesoft

With the release of Maple 13, we have also released a major new feature to Maplesoft.com, Online Help:

Every one of Maple's help pages is now available online. With this new feature, you will be able to view the help pages right in your browser and download the source Maple worksheet to interact with in Maple.

When I was a toddler and learning about the concept of numbers, I used to play a simple game with my parents.  They’d think of a number, and I’d try to guess it.  They would shout “hotter!” if I were getting closer to the number and “colder!” if I was getting further away.  I’m still fascinated by number games, but now it’s Sudoku, the Countdown numbers game… or balancing my bank account at the end of the month.

I spent many of my callow teenage years playing games of chance involving dice and cards.  But it was only after I stopped playing that I stopped losing money. I guess at that time I never really understood the Gambler’s Fallacy, or probability itself.

(Pop quiz: Toss a coin 40 times - what are the chances of getting six heads or six tails in a row? The answer’s in a post script below, together with some Maple code.)

At university, I became fascinated by a UK quiz show called Countdown (and not just because I had a crush on Carol Voderman – an ex-presenter).  In one of the rounds, the contestants have to find the combination of additions, subtractions, multiplications and divisions to make six seed numbers equal a target. 

I’ve attached a Maple worksheet that automatically solves the Countdown numbers game (a simple click of a button asks Maple to find the solution for you).  Kent – one of the sales people I work with – was so fascinated by the worksheet that he spent an entire weekend playing with it, much to the displeasure of his wife and kids. 

Now, if I want some mental stimulation, I often crack open a book of Sudoku puzzles I’ve got lying around. By the time I’m bored, I usually break out Joe Riel’s fantastic Maple-based Sudoku solver.

P.S The following Maple procedure gives the probability of k heads (or k tails) in a row out of n coin tosses.

Many people underestimate the chances of getting 6 heads in a row out of 40 coin tosses, and find it hard to accept it’s as high as 26%.  Given a large enough sample size, the improbable is likely to happen.  How else do you explain the English football team finally having a run of wins?

Download the attachment: CountdownNumbersGam.mw

Maplesoft has launched our brand new Application Center.  Aside from updating the overall look of the Application Center, several new features have been added, such as the ability to post comments on apps.  When you have a minute, head on over and take a look for yourself!

The third edition of Getting Started with Maple was released by John Wiley & Sons in March 2009.

The author team for this edition is:

• Douglas B. Meade (Univ of S. Carolina)
• Mike May, S.J. (St. Louis Univ)
• C-K. Cheung (Boston Univ)
• G.E. Keogh (Boston Univ)

The 13-digit ISBN is 978-0-470-45554-8.

Great playwrights and poets are drummers – they craft the written word so that the rhythm and the cadence of their dialogue when spoken are a drumbeat, and combine with the meaning of the language to create emotion.  Shakespeare, for example, used syllables as his drumbeats (as did many other playwrights and poets).  Analyzing linguistic structure isn’t a common application for a math tool (and for a very good reason), but can Maple tell us more about Shakespeare’s favourite drumbeat?

We need to find some way of programmatically counting the number of syllables in a word. In an irregular language like English, this is a hit-and-miss affair.  Maple’s SyllableLength command, for example, tallies the number of vowel-consonant changes in a word to calculate the number of syllables (but increases the count by one if the word ends in a “y”.)  While this is a good start, for many words it’s merely an approximation. Conscious and serious, for example, have the same number of vowel-constant changes, but a different number of syllables when spoken.

I chose to modify the basic premise of SyllableLength with several empirical adjustments that give a more accurate tally of the number of syllables in a word.  This simply involves increasing or decreasing the calculated number of vowel-consonant changes if a word contains a particular letter structure.  For example, terrible has two vowel-consonant changes, but we increase this count by one (to calculate the number of syllables) because it ends in ble.

Although we can implement a number of these workarounds, this (admittedly very clumsy) approach is never going to account for the full irregularity of the English language, and we have to accept the results in that light.  The attached worksheet contains the chosen approach, and I’d appreciate feedback on more accurate ways of programmatically counting the number of syllables in a word.

So, let’s start by examining the monologue in Act 3 Scene 1 of Henry V.  Here’s the number of syllables per line as computed by the attached worksheet.

“Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more;”
10 syllables

“Or close the wall up with our English dead”
10 syllables

“In peace there’s nothing so becomes a man”
10 syllables

“As modest stillness and humility”
10 syllables

“But when the blast of war blows in our ears,”
10 syllables

“Then imitate the action of the tiger”
11 syllables

So it looks like Shakespeare used ten beats, or syllables, per line, but placed an extra syllable in the final quoted line.  In fact, he often wrote monologues in a style called iambic pentameter, in which each line consists of five syllable-pairs (the first syllable in each pair being unstressed and the second stressed)

In much the same way that the darkening of a cinema is a visual cue that implies that a movie is about to begin, Shakespeare used iambic pentameter as an audio cue to signify emotionally resonant or particularly important dialogue, occasionally varying the number of syllables (or the number of polysyllabic words) per line to create a sense of discord, or a quickening or slowing of pace.

You might want to check out the following video – it’s Kenneth Brannagh’s version of the full speech in his 1989 film adaptation of Henry V.

Here’s another example from Romeo and Juliet (Act 3 Scene 5), together with the syllable counts given by Maple.

“Wilt thou be gone? It is not yet near day”
10 syllables

“It was the nightingale, and not the lark”
10 syllables

“That pierced the fearful hollow of thine ear”
11 syllables

“Nightly she sings on yond pomegranate tree”
11 syllables

“Believe me, love, it was the nightingale”
10 syllables

Again, Shakespeare shifts between 10 and 11 syllables per line to indicate emotionally resonant and poetic dialogue.

Shakespeare did not write entirely in verse with a defined metric structure.  He also wrote in free prose with no defined syllable structure, sometimes to indicate that the speaker was vulgar or mentally unbalanced, or in short question-answer dialogue.

Given the limitations of a purely programmatic approach, we’re never going to fully deconstruct the beauty of Shakespeare’s language.  Maple can, however, offer a small insight into how he controlled the rhythm and pace of his dialogue.

Download the attachment: Shakespeare.mw

The MapleSim Connectivity Toolbox is now available. With this toolbox, you can export MapleSim models to Simulink, including rotational, translational, and multibody mechanical systems, thermal models, and electric circuits. It creates Simulink S-Function blocks for fast execution within Simulink and real-time implementation through Real-Time Workshop.

For more information, see