Computers are often thought of as being only capable of solving problems numerically. But this is a far cry from the truth. There exist many Computer Algebra Systems (CAS) available on a variety of computer systems which allow us to perform very sophisticated analytical mathematical operations. These systems originated from techniques of artificial intelligence developed over many years. Today they allow mathematicians, scientists, engineers, and financial modelists to often find analytical solutions to their "real life" problems. Furthermore, these packages offer the extra capability of evaluating expressions numerically to any desired accuracy. They are fast becoming standard tools within these professions. They can also help students to develop a better intuition for "equations" via the availability of a variety of tools, both analytical and graphical; they are thus becoming an integral part of science and engineering teaching.
Maple is such a Computer Algebra System which was developed at the University of Waterloo (Canada). It is available for a variety of personal computers (i.e., PCs and Macs) and Unix workstations (i.e., SUN, LINUX...). The student version for the Mac or the PC computers is a very complete and capable package which will be able to satisfy most student's needs. We have adopted Maple as our standard "algebraic" package in this textbook.
This chapter will introduce some basic Maple concepts and syntax. This chapter forms the basis on which the applications presented in the following chapters will build.
Chapter 2
Section 2.2
TOC
|
Any questions or suggestions should be directed to |