Maple 8.Waterloo Maple Waterloo Maple Inc. is a privately held Canadian software company, headquartered in Waterloo, Ontario. It is best known as the manufacturer of the Maple computer algebra system. Corporate History Waterloo Maple Inc. . c2002. Windows 95/98/ ME/NT 4 (64MB), XP, 2000 (12MB), Linux, Pentium II The successor to the Pentium Pro from Intel. Pentium II refers to the CPU chip or the PC that uses it. Code named "Klamath," the Pentium II was a Pentium Pro with MMX multimedia instructions. , 233MHz (MegaHertZ) One million cycles per second. It is used to measure the transmission speed of electronic devices, including channels, buses and the computer's internal clock. A one-megahertz clock (1 MHz) means some number of bits (16, 32, 64, etc. , 150MB free disk space for single user, 230MB for network CD-ROM CD-ROM: see compact disc. CD-ROM in full compact disc read-only memory Type of computer storage medium that is read optically (e.g., by a laser). disk, user's guide. Student edition, $129.00; teacher edition, $995.00 SA This mathematics program provides powerful capabilities for computation and symbolic manipulation across a broad range of mathematics. Like other programs of this type, you enter math commands in a document in a command-line syntax and Maple evaluates them and displays the results in the document. The document can also contain text and provides the basic features of a modern word processing word processing, use of a computer program or a dedicated hardware and software package to write, edit, format, and print a document. Text is most commonly entered using a keyboard similar to a typewriter's, although handwritten input (see pen-based computer) and program. Maple can compute solutions exactly (e.g., using fractions, radicals and constants like pi) or can provide numerical approximations. It can also create 2D and 3D graphs of functions and mathematical expressions. Version 8 provides enhancements in three areas: user interface, calculus education, and advanced mathematics support. The user interface improvements are called Maplets and had been released separately (see review in KLIATT, May 2002) but are now bundled into Maple 8. Maple, like other powerful math software, is based around a text-based command line interface where the user types mathematical expressions and the software returns a response. As the software becomes more flexible and capable, the list of commands becomes longer and the command-line interface becomes more complex and difficult to learn. Maplets enable you to build dialogue boxes and point-and-click user interfaces within Maple. For example, a teacher could quickly build a user interface to a capability in Maple that helps students explore a topic, without the students ever having to know the Maple command language. Maplets are quite easy to create (once you understand the basics of Maple's command syntax) and can range from simple dialogue boxes for entering numbers and expressions to complex interfaces with graphs, sliders sliders a species of tortoise kept as pets. They have a black shell and a red stripe behind the eye. Called also Chrysemys scripta elegans, red-eared sliders. , check boxes, and drop down menus. Maple 8 includes a useful command called "interactive" that uses Maplets to help users plot a graph of a function For the more general concept of the graph of a relation, see relation. For another use of the term "graph" in mathematics, see graph theory. For a graph-theoretic representation of a function from a set to the same set, see functional graph. , even if they do not know Maple commands. Waterloo also bundled the calculus education applications into Maple 8 that had been separately available from the Maple Web site. These Maple files walk students through the basics of calculus, providing examples that utilize the program's symbolic and graphing capabilities. Teachers can use the new commands added by this package in their own teaching of calculus. For example, you could draw a graph and a tangent line tangent line In geometry, a line that intersects a circle exactly once; in calculus, a line that touches a curve at one point and whose slope is equal to that of the curve at that point. to that graph at a point using basic Maple commands, but it takes a fair bit of work. The calculus education package includes a "tangent" command that does it all for you. Other useful commands cover surfaces and volumes of revolution, secant lines, graph analysis (concavity con·cav·i·ty n. A hollow or depression that is curved like the inner surface of a sphere. concavity, n 1. the condition of being concave. n 2. , extrema Extrema may reference: In Mathematics
The enhancements to the mathematics capabilities of Maple 8 are less likely to be of interest to high school teachers. These include enhancements to Maple's handling of numeric partial differential equations, vector calculus, calculus of variations calculus of variations, branch of mathematics concerned with finding maximum or minimum conditions for a relationship between two or more variables that depends not only on the variables themselves, as in the ordinary calculus, but also on an additional arbitrary , and ordinary differential equations. Maple 8 also includes the ability to generate Java code that corresponds to Maple expressions, which may be useful to teachers who build Java applications for their math Web sites. In summary, Maple is a full-featured mathematics environment with powerful capabilities, and all high schools should have at least one copy of Maple or a similar program available for students doing advanced math. For schools with previous versions of Maple, whether to upgrade or not will depend on the value to you of the new features in version 8. The calculus package is available to download from: www.mapleapps.com and if you teach calculus and use Maple I would recommend taking a look. The Maplets package is only available for download to users of previous versions of Maple if they have signed up for the Extended Maintenance Plan (or, of course, you can get Maplets by upgrading to Maple 8). Thomas S. Downey, Teacher, Rivers Sch., Weston MA |
|
||||||||||||||||||
Printer friendly
Cite/link
Email
Feedback
Reader Opinion