We would have to start with a hypothetical model being that it would be more acceptable.  Yes the facts could be faulty as I did not verify nor pull from multiple sources and studies.  I did mention a lot of factors were missing and not mentioning employment is one of them. 

You're idea that some sort of predator/prey model would be similar is something I thought about as well albeit a much more complicated system.

It is obvious in a globally defined system that 100% stays within the sytem.  What I meant was, to see what happens to locally defined groups on a global scale ... that is making local boundaries become transparent so goods are able to be tracked (an outside observer).  As compared to things that might dissappear and reappear magically to a local observer.

@PatrickT Surely you're joking Mr. Feynman.  I enjoyed that book as well.  That man was a walking physics mastermind, and one of my favorite people in history... and no, if someone is wondering, you won't find him as any of my passwords.

If there was ever a password lottery, the chances are probably greater that randomly chosen letters would form an english word. 

@PatrickT 

I find that interesting, that so many people would pick 1-2-3-4-5-6.  As you mentioned it would seem like a clever choice, but after all it has just as much chance as coming up as any other number.  So it would seem that a lot of people are really clever or too many people can't think of something original.  I might opt for the latter. 

Which brings me to my comment title.  The number one worst password used is 1-2-3-4-5-6  ... looks like people aren't so clever after all, eh?

@felipe_p   It is not necessary to know parallel programming to take advantage of all of the cores.  Maple 15 works behind the scenes to take advantage of any available processing power (not sure how efficiently but always improving with each version).

The 2.7Ghz will calculate faster than the 2.2Ghz on a 1:1 basis.  On some calculations it would be 2:4 (almost twice as fast with the quad core - but again only if parallel can be done behind the scenes)

Documented from the what's new for Maple 15

"Maple takes advantage of the full processing power of your computer, automatically detecting and using all available processor cores to perform many computations in parallel.  You do not nee to do any special programming, change any options, or even know how many cores your computer has!  in Maple 15, many fundamental operations can be done in parallel, so your results are available much faster and you can tackle larger problems.

As an example Maple 15 automatically parallelizes many polynomial operations.  Since polynomial operations are used extensively throughout the Maple library as part of other computations, many different operations will also benefit from this parallelism."

However without seeing benchmarks for Maple on these specific processors to get some idea, it would be really hard to choose.  It would be nice to hear other maple users opinions on the subject and perhaps even submitting some values for comparisons.  In any case I think either of those processors make a fine choice.

@felipe_p   It is not necessary to know parallel programming to take advantage of all of the cores.  Maple 15 works behind the scenes to take advantage of any available processing power (not sure how efficiently but always improving with each version).

The 2.7Ghz will calculate faster than the 2.2Ghz on a 1:1 basis.  On some calculations it would be 2:4 (almost twice as fast with the quad core - but again only if parallel can be done behind the scenes)

Documented from the what's new for Maple 15

"Maple takes advantage of the full processing power of your computer, automatically detecting and using all available processor cores to perform many computations in parallel.  You do not nee to do any special programming, change any options, or even know how many cores your computer has!  in Maple 15, many fundamental operations can be done in parallel, so your results are available much faster and you can tackle larger problems.

As an example Maple 15 automatically parallelizes many polynomial operations.  Since polynomial operations are used extensively throughout the Maple library as part of other computations, many different operations will also benefit from this parallelism."

However without seeing benchmarks for Maple on these specific processors to get some idea, it would be really hard to choose.  It would be nice to hear other maple users opinions on the subject and perhaps even submitting some values for comparisons.  In any case I think either of those processors make a fine choice.

I find that route a bit slow at best.  The author may already be working on another project at the time so patience is required.  Secondly authors like a full solution to reply with, before any replies are seen.  An acknowledgement is sometimes (...actually always) appreciated. 

As I don't have Maplesim, I always appreciate the Maple equivalent.  Perhaps as a request we could ask Maplesim applicants to include a Maple worksheet equivalent where possible?  or a soon to be posted equivalent?  Just an idea. 

I find that route a bit slow at best.  The author may already be working on another project at the time so patience is required.  Secondly authors like a full solution to reply with, before any replies are seen.  An acknowledgement is sometimes (...actually always) appreciated. 

As I don't have Maplesim, I always appreciate the Maple equivalent.  Perhaps as a request we could ask Maplesim applicants to include a Maple worksheet equivalent where possible?  or a soon to be posted equivalent?  Just an idea. 

Add new boxplot types in the statistics package - violinplot and beanplot.  If too late to add to 16 then add this to the Maple 17 list.

Of course added and improved GPU support for CUDA and OpenCL for both single and double precision GPU's so we can experiment on old cheap video cards :)

**edit added - Dec27 4:50pm**  -  The violin plot is actually a doubled kernel density plot with the bean plot being somewhat similar.  Not really that hard to implement a proc to create.  On a similar note it wouldn't be hard at all to have it as a fast built in command either.  In essence I would surprised to not see it in Maple16 release.

Yes, regarding the implicitplot comment that doesn't exist in that 2008 thread.  It was me who made an implicitplot answer (I thought it was quite an original idea and not a bad one at that either) and then sadly deleted my post due to the dissappointingly high number of down thumbs to my answer.  A great celebration ensued following the demise of the downthumbs ... so if anyone's wondering about Robert Israels mysterious reference to an implicitplot answer, you now have it.

Actually it was me who posed that question (custom symbols) back in 2010.  The answer I got was no, it cannot be done. 

Always a workaround though, you could always create your own plot object and use them at your specified pointplot coordinates.  Won't work for symbol but the workaround is probably good enough.

Actually it was me who posed that question (custom symbols) back in 2010.  The answer I got was no, it cannot be done. 

Always a workaround though, you could always create your own plot object and use them at your specified pointplot coordinates.  Won't work for symbol but the workaround is probably good enough.

I believe there was a thread about this in the last year or so.  I think links were provided, I'm almost sure a zip file was provided as well.  If not a repost here would probably be appreciated.

That error is because I forgot to write in the with(plots) command.

Since I didn't include with(plots): I should have written b:=plots[pointplot]([xs,ys])

sorry bout that.

That error is because I forgot to write in the with(plots) command.

Since I didn't include with(plots): I should have written b:=plots[pointplot]([xs,ys])

sorry bout that.

I too was interested by the title of this question.  It might be interesting to start a real question with the same Title.

I was burned once for not choosing a title that did not appropriately address the content of my question.  I would try to branch this question but branching does not work for me.  Although I do not have answers for the question you pose I could start off some ideas for the Title :) and maybe someone could branch this question for me as I cannot

How to count grains of sand in a heap -

I think we could start to make a couple of assumptions. 
1/ The pile of sand falls in a cone.
2/ All grains of sand are either the same size (0.5mm) or fall into some size normal distribution of 0.5mm to 2mm.

Some interesting ideas come from this problem.  Again, some more assumptions, the grains are nearly circular shapes as opposed to irregular shapes.  Given if the shapes are circular there would exist a maximum space that could exist between the grains and as a result give the minimum number of grains in the pile (as an example of marbles stacked in an array all at 90 degrees to each other) similarily a minimum space could exist which would describe a possible maximum number of grains in the pile (as there is no outer boundary to be confined, it is highly possible that the grains of sand fall into a closely packed scenario - what is the probability that they do?) as the example of marbles stacked in a pyramid having spaces at a minimum. 

Of course using marbles makes it easy... So there you have it.  Sorry I have no Maple input at the moment but I thought I'd get the marbles rolling so to speak.