Department of Mathematical
Sciences
Instructor: Markus
Schmidmeier
Fall 1999
Introduction to Maple V
The following preliminary information may be helpful for students interested
in my course.
Course Schedule
Three parallel sections, each one hour per week, will be given:
M 12 - 12:50 p.m., T 10 - 10:50 a.m. and T 4 - 4:50 p.m.,
all in room SE 201 (computer lab)
Prerequisites
Objectives
Introduce students to the Maple computer algebra package and some simple
computer programming. On completion of this course, students should be
able to: 1. Use Maple as a calculator and for symbolic algebra. 2. Plot
graphs and solve equations using Maple. 3. Present mathematical work using
Scientific Notebook 4. Write simple programs in the Maple programming
language.
Syllabus
This course introduces students to the Maple mathematics package. At
its simplest, maple can be used as a glorified calculator. It is also a
symbolic algebra package, meaning that it can be used to simplify expressions,
and compute derivatives and integrals, etc. With extensive graph plotting
facilities, and inbuilt commands for solving equations, Maple can also
be used for solving real-life problems. Finally, Maple contains a computer
programming language, following fairly standard conventions, and the course
uses this as a (very short) introduction to computer programming. Topics
covered include: 1. Introduction to the computer system (logging on, Windows,
etc.). 2. Using Maple as a calculator. Symbolic versus numerical
calculations. 3. Manipulating expressions in Maple (simplify, expand, combine,
convert, etc.). 4. Calculus with Maple (differentiation, integration,
sums series, limits). 5. Plotting graphs (plot, the plots package,
and plot3d if time). 6. Use of Scientific Notebook for the
presentation of mathematical texts. 7. Understanding evaluation in
Maple (eval and delayed evaluation). 8. Solving equations symbolically
(solve) and numerically (fsolve). 9. Programming structures (for loops,
while loops, conditional commands). 10. Procedures (including local and
global variables, parameters and arguments).
Software for your PC
The computer algebra package MuPAD
has syntax similar to Maple; for students its available for free, e. g.
on the internet.
Last Modified on October 28, 1999, by Markus Schmidmeier