Do you have a Chromebook?  Are you a student or a teacher looking for the mighty power of Maple, but find yourself limited by your web-only computer? Well, have no fear, because Maple Learn is here!

As a web-based application, Maple Learn is fully supported by Chromebooks. You can create graphs, perform and check calculations, and share documents all within the comfort of your own browser. No need to download any kind of software—just go to learn.maplesoft.com to get started!

Students, if you’re looking for some use for your school-provided Chromebook and wondering how it can help you learn instead of just weighing down your backpack, Maple Learn can help. It’s the perfect, all-inclusive tool to help you learn, visualize, and check your math. And, if you’re looking to brush up on all that math you forgot over the summer, you can check out the Maple Learn Example Gallery, home to hundreds of examples and explanations of a wide variety of math concepts. And it’s all accessible on your Chromebook!

Here's a podcast that covers a few topics that get discussed on MaplePrimes.
 

We all like finding the right tool for the job. In the Sep 2021 episode of the Engineering Matters Podcast “#127 – Tools for Thinking” you can discover how far engineers have come in their quest for better tools.

It features contributions from several members of the Maplesoft team as they discuss how the user experience shapes the adoption of engineering software tools.

The hosts have fun describing some early calculation hacks - from early Sumerian farmers using their fingers as tally counters, to the paper calculus notebooks of the 1850s used by historical engineering figures like Isambard Kingdom Brunel. What starts as a necessity gets improved over time to save them mental effort – all driven by the way users interact with the tool.

This episode gives a behind-the-scenes look at some of the decisions that shaped the engineering product that is now Maple Flow from its roots in Maple. Maplesoft CEO Laurent Bernardin describes the spark of innovation in the late 1970s, when two professors at the University of Waterloo developed Maple. “The two professors got together, realising that there was a need in math education for a tool to help with calculations and setting out to create that tool. And Maple was born quickly, was adopted across universities around the globe.”

As engineers typically work in ways far removed from the regular academic setting, Product Manager Samir Khan weighs in on the shift that comes from a different user base: “Different tools have different design intents,” says Khan. “Some tools are designed for programmers such as code development environments, like Visual Studio. Some environments are aimed at mathematicians, people who need precise control over the mathematical structure of their equations, and some environments are designed for engineers who simply want to throw down a few equations on a virtual whiteboard and manipulate them and get results.”

The conversation also touches on the design of the GUI itself. Margaret Hinchcliffe, Maple’s Senior GUI Developer expresses the importance of smoothing the user experience - drilling down and taking “the typical tasks that people want to do the most, and make those the most immediate. So really focusing on how many keystrokes do they need to do this task?”.

Ironically the idea of the paper notebook still has features that are desirable. Khan muses on the idea that Maplesoft has “taken the first step with having a virtual whiteboard, but Maple Flow still relies on keyboard and mouse input”. He offers suggestions for what may be next in the industry: “It’d be interesting to see if we can take advantage of modern advances in deep learning and AI to imitate what humans are doing and interpreting handwritten mathematics.”

You can listen to the entire podcast (~30 min) here: https://engineeringmatters.reby.media/2021/09/30/the-evolution-of-tools-for-thinking/

Calling all fans of customizable documents! What am I saying, we’re all fans of customizable documents here. Well, we’re all in luck, then, because with our latest updates to Maple Learn you can tailor even more details of your documents to your exact specifications. Read on to see what’s new!

As we all know, graphs are not merely a method of communicating mathematical concepts, but are of course an art form that can be used to display both mathematical and aesthetic beauty. But sometimes, you may find a little something getting in the way of that beauty… those darn gridlines. Even the most elegant of graphs can be tarnished by this faint, criss-crossing lines. But have no fear! With our latest updates, you can fix this problem with the click of a button. Simply select “Plot Settings” from the graph controls to the right of the plot window, and set Axes to “None”. Finally, your graph is pristine. What’s more, that’s not the only new feature we’ve added to the Plot Settings menu. You can also set the axes to “Boxed”, allowing you to see the gridline labels no matter how from the origin you are on the graph. You can also manually set the boundaries of your axes! No more scrolling and zooming to get the perspective just right.

As if that wasn’t enough, we’ve also added another exciting feature that will help make your graphs look exactly as you want them. By clicking the small graph icon to the left of your expression, you can customize the colour of your plot! You can choose from a wide variety of pre-set colours, or you can use our colour selector to get the exact shade you want. Any custom colours will be temporarily added to the bottom of the colour palette, so you can be sure that your graphs are consistent. At last, you can rest assured that your Maple Learn graphs won’t clash with your outfit.

What’s more, if you’re a fan of graph customizability, then this is the set of updates for you. We’ve added two more features that will help make your graphs both pretty and easy to understand. Tired of trying to draw shapes, only to have each side be a different colour? Well, no more! We’ve adjusted the Segment command to accept as many coordinates as you’d like, allowing you to create polygons (or just funky zigzags) to your heart’s content! As well, we’ve introduced a new command: the Label command. Now you can add text right onto the plot window and label your graph as you see fit. Or maybe you could use the Maple Learn plot window to start drafting a best-selling novel. The possibilities are endless!

We also wanted to take a moment to highlight our Example Gallery. We’ve made some changes to make it easier to find the examples you’re looking for. And with over 400 documents and counting, we’re sure to have what you want! But, on the off-chance we don’t, let us know! We’d love to hear about what you’d like to see. And as always, that goes for both the Example Gallery and for any features you’d like in Maple Learn itself! We appreciate your feedback.

Welcome to Maplesoft Orientation Week!  We know what a difference math software can make when it comes to enhancing student learning, but we also know that everyone is very busy at the beginning of the school year! So our goal for this week is to make it easier for high school and university students to select the best math tool for their needs, and help them get on track for a great math year.  The week’s activities include free training on Maple and Maple Learn, discounts on Student Maple, live events with some of your favorite math TikTok personalities, and even the chance to win an iPad Air!  Check out all the activities now, and plan your week or tell your students.

Orientation week runs Mon. Sept. 20 – Fri. Sept. 24.

As most Maple Primes readers have hopefully seen, Maplesoft is having our Maple Conference again this fall. This year we decided to add a space to the conference to showcase creative and artistic work that would be interesting to our Maple Community. The conference organizers asked me if I would coordinate and curate this exhibition of creative uses of Math and Maple, and I agreed. So now, I am asking the Maple community to send us your most creative work related to or using Maple.

The obvious thing to submit would be a beautiful digital plot or animation with an interesting mathematical story and of course, we are really interested to see those. But, we would are especially excited to see some art created with physcial media. I would love to see your knitting or needle point project that is inspired by a mathematical theme or was created with the help of Maple.

The full announcement can be found at the Maple Conference Art Gallery page. We would like to have all submissions by October 12th so that can review and finalize the gallery before the conference begins November 1st.

Oh yeah, there will also be prizes.

I can't wait to see what everyone sends in!

We had the exciting opportunity to interview Dr Trefor Bazett, a math professor at the University of Victoria who also regularly posts videos to his YouTube channel explaining a wide variety of math concepts, from cool math facts to full university courses. You may also recognize him from the recent webinar he did on effective interactive learning! If you’re a teacher, and particularly if you’re trying to find ways to keep your students engaged when teaching math online, read on for some great advice and perspective from someone who’s already built a significant online following. If you’re not a teacher, read on anyways! We may not all be teachers, but we’ve all been (or are!) students. And as students, we probably all have some opinions on how things should be taught! Read on for a new perspective, and maybe even some new ways to approach your learning in the future.

What are some unique challenges presented by teaching math online, and how do you overcome them?

Teaching online I work a lot harder to keep students truly engaged. I’m a big believer in active learning, which means that students are actively taking part in their learning through solving problems, asking questions, and making connections themselves. This might seem a bit strange coming from a YouTuber since watching a video is one of the most passive ways to learn! When it is an in-person class, the social pressures of that environment make it easier to create a supportive learning environment that fosters active engagement. When I teach online, I try to scaffold interactive activities and learning opportunities around my videos, but for me at least it is challenging! I find it easier in many ways to think of the passive components of my teaching like creating a video that introduces a topic but designing learning activities around those videos where students are engaged and feel like they are part of a supportive community is crucial. 

Do you think the experience of teaching online has led to any positive trends in education that will live on once students are back in the classroom?

Absolutely. Whether we wanted to or not, teachers now have experience and skills integrating technology into their learning because so many of us had to figure out how to teach online. The big question is how do we leverage these new technological tools and experiences and resources we have created for when we return to the physical classroom? Can we reincorporate in a new way, for instance, the videos we created for the pandemic? We have so many amazing tech tools – and of course I have to shout out Maple Learn as one of those! – that made it possible for students to engage in interactive learning in the online space, but now we can think about all the ways to leverage these tools in face-to-face learning whether as part of a classroom demo, in-class student activities, or outside-of-class activities.

How do you think the influx of math educators on social media, such as yourself, has changed and will change the shape of math education?

I’m so proud of the math education community on YouTube and other platforms, the quality and diversity of math education online is truly incredible. Having universal access to free high quality education materials can really help level the playing field. But there is still a crucial role to the classroom as well, whether it is in person or online. Just watching YouTube videos on a math channel isn’t going to be enough for most people. You need to be actively practicing math in a supportive environment, receiving feedback on your progress, and getting help when you need it. I feel there is a lot of opportunities for teachers to leverage online materials for instance by linking students to excellent expository content while in class teachers are focusing on designing engaging active learning activities.

What made you decide to create a YouTube channel? Do you have any tips for others wanting to do the same?

My first online course was designed asynchronously and so I needed a place to host the videos for that course. Why not YouTube? I only had twenty students in the course, and never imagined anyone else would actually watch them, let along millions of them! But when I noticed my first math video that got picked up by the YouTube search algorithm and I kept getting comment after comment thanking me I realized there really was a big appetite for quality math education content on YouTube.

My biggest tip is just to get started! Your first video isn’t (probably!) going to be the one that gets picked up by the YouTube algorithm, but it is the one that starts you on that path and builds up your skills at telling math stories, speaking to the camera, using the technology, and so forth.  Don’t worry about that first video being completely perfect or mimicking the “style” of other YouTubers, use it as a chance to build from. If you want to know more about my process for making videos, I share a lot of my process here.

What do you think is the best way for students to approach homework problems?

Homework is often perceived, rather understandably, as a burdensome chore you frustratingly have to do. If that is the perception, then it is also understandable that students would take behaviours that might help them get points on the homework but aren’t very effective for learning. However, if you think about homework as both an opportunity to learn and an opportunity to get feedback on how effective your learning is, now you can engage in much more effective behaviours.

My suggestion is to always genuinely try the problem on your own first. If I’m completely stuck, I really like to write down everything I do know about the problem such as the definitions of the math words involved in the problem. This makes it so much easier to see all the pieces and figure out how to assemble them a bit like a jig-saw puzzle.

I’m a big believer in self-regulated learning, where you are identifying precisely what you know and what you don’t know, and then adapting you learning to zero in on the parts that are challenging. Technology tools like Maple Learn that provide step-by-step solutions to many types of math manipulations can help with this self-regulation, for instance by verifying that you correctly did some cumbersome algebra or precisely where the mistake is at.

Even if you have solved the problem, you can still learn more from it! You can imagine how the instructor could modify that question on a test and if so how would you respond? You can map out how this problem connects to other problems. You can write down a concept map of the larger picture and where this problem fits in it. I have a whole video with a bunch more strategies for approaching homework problems beyond just getting the answer here.

As a teacher, what is your opinion on providing students with step-by-step solutions?

Step-by-step solutions definitely have a role. To master math, you need to master a lot of little details, and then the deeper connections between ideas can start to form. Step-by-step solutions can really help support students mastering all those little details because they can identify the precise location of their confusion as opposed to just noting they got the wrong answer and not be able to identify where exactly their confusion lies. I think they can also help lower math anxiety as students can be confident they will have the tools to understand the problem.

However, it is important to use step-by-step solutions appropriately so that students use them as a supportive learning tool and not a crutch. Sometimes students try to learn math by mimicking the steps of some process without deeply understanding why or when to apply the steps. There can be a big gap between following a solution by someone else and being able to come up with it yourself. This is where teachers have an important role to play. We need to both be clear in our messaging to students about how to use these supports effectively, as well as to consistently be asking formative questions that encourage students to reflect on the mathematics they are doing and provide opportunities for students to creatively solve problems. 

You spoke a bit in your webinar about the “flipped classroom” model. Do you have any tips for educators who want to move more towards a flipped classroom where in-class time is focused on discussion and exploration?

I really love flipped classroom approaches. The big idea here is that students established foundational content knowledge before class, for instance by watching my pre-class videos, so they are empowered to do more collaborative active learning in class. The social supports of class are thus focused on the higher-level learning objectives. However, as much as I love this approach, it is just one of really an entire spectrum of options that start to shift towards student-centered learning. My main tip is to start small, perhaps just adding in one five-minute collaborative problem to each class before jumping all the way to a flipped classroom pedagogy. For myself, it took a few years where I kept adding more and more active learning elements to my classroom and each time I did that I felt it worked so well I added a bit more. One positive consequence from the pandemic-induced shift to online learning is there is now a tremendous amount of high-quality content available for free, so it is easier today to start embracing a fully flipped classroom than it has ever been.

What are some ways teachers can let students take their learning into their own hands?

This is so important. Sometimes teaching can be too paternalistic, but I think we should trust our students more. Give students the time and space to try tackling interesting problems and it will happen! Our role as teachers is to create a supportive learning environment that is conducive to students learning. A few ingredients I think that can help are firstly to encourage students to collaborate and support each other. Mathematics is an inherently collaborative discipline in practice, but this can also be very helpful for learning. Secondly, we can provide effective scaffolding in problems that provide avenues for students to get started and making progress. Thirdly, tech tools like Maple Learn let us take some of the friction away from things like graphing, cumbersome algebra, and other procedural computations meaning we can instead focus our learning on developing conceptual understanding.

In your opinion, how can we motivate students to learn math?

Authenticity. Motivation is sometimes divided between intrinsic motivations (enjoyment of the subject itself) and extrinsic motivations (for instance wanting to get a good grade), and in general we learn more effectively and more deeply when we are intrinsically motivated. To capture intrinsic motivation, I always try to make my teaching and the problems I ask students to work on to feel authentic. That might mean the problem connects to real world challenges where students can see how the math relates to the world, but it doesn’t have to! A problem that stays in pure math but asks and answers interesting mathematical problems and delights the learner is also great for intrinsic motivation. If students are empowered to tackle authentic problems in a supportive learning environment, that motivation will naturally come.

What’s your favourite number, mathematical expression, or math factoid?

Somewhere on the surface of the earth, there is a spot that has the exact same temperature and pressure as the spot exactly opposite it on the other side of the earth. This is true no matter what possible weather patterns you have going on all around the earth! That this has to always be true is due to the Borsuk-Ulam theorem and if you want to know more about this theorem and its many consequences, I’ve done a whole video on it here.

Any parting thoughts?

At the start of every new school year, I read about dozens of cool ideas and am tempted to think “I want to try that!”. I suggest instead finding one thing to improve on the year before, one thing that you can really invest in that will make a difference for your students. You don’t need to reinvent the wheel every year!

Another series of updates to Maple Learn? It’s almost like we’re constantly working on Maple Learn to add more features and improve based on your feedback! Wild, right? Anyways, here’s some of the latest features we’ve added to Maple Learn.

First, we’re very excited to present our new Example Gallery. Not only does it have a shiny new design, but there are now over 400 example documents in just about every area of mathematics you can think of.  These documents are perfect for seeing how Maple Learn can be used to teach and explore concepts, and you can easily modify them to suit your own needs. We’re still working hard on improving the Example Gallery and its content, so let us know what you want to see!

We’ve also got some shiny new features in Maple Learn itself. Do you ever look at a graph and think, “Wow, this is great and all, but I sure would love if it had fewer straight lines and more circles?” I know I do. Luckily for both of us, Maple Learn now supports polar coordinates! Just click the round globe icon to see your plots transformed to the circular form you’ve always wanted them to be.

Looking to enhance the text portion of your documents, rather than the graphs? We’ve got just the thing for you—Maple Learn now supports bullet lists! Take your pick of numerical lists, alphabetical, or your traditional bullet point. If you’re looking to augment your document with a step-by-step process, a list of your favourite mathematical expressions, or you’re just feeling tired of using pen and paper for grocery lists, Maple Learn now has what you need.

Speaking of improving the layout of your documents, we now have an option for horizontal tables. The vertical tables can get a bit a long, especially for a short document, but with horizontal tables you can keep all your documents cozy and compact.

And as always, this is just a taste of what we’ve been up to. We’ve also improved a variety of features (including our new steps feature!) and fixed an assortment of bugs. And remember, we couldn’t do this without you! Please continue to let us know what you’d like to see in Maple Learn, and someday it could be your request featured in our post!

Calling all teachers! Have you ever sat wracking your brain on how to create an engaging lesson for students who aren’t so keen on math? Are you trying to help your students understand concepts on a deeper level? Well, Dr Trefor Bazett’s webinar “How to Design Effective Interactive Learning Activities” might have the answers you seek. Dr Trefor is professor at the University of Victoria who has risen to fame on the internet with his engaging YouTube math tutorials. He recently gave a great talk sharing some of the things he’s learned about teaching and how he structures his course content to maximize student learning and engagement. We wanted to take the time to highlight a few of the points he made.

One of the things Dr Trefor emphasized in his talk was the concept of active learning. Unusual as it may seem, math is a lot like juggling. You can learn all the theory of juggling and how it’s supposed to work, but when it comes down to it, if you want to learn how to juggle, you have to actually juggle! And as he describes, it’s the same for math. If you want to learn math, you have to actually do math. This means that educators need to find a way to make learning active for their students, and find ways for them to actually explore and use the concepts that are taught in class. There are many ways to approach this, and Dr Trefor has a few ideas in his talk that might help get you started! For example, he discusses a backwards model wherein teachers create their lectures based on the assessments and activities, rather than the other way around. That way, you can be sure that what you’re teaching is what the students need to know in order to complete the activities you’re giving them—and that in turn can make the activities more engaging for the students.

Another idea he talked about that I personally found quite appealing was the idea of incorporating storytelling into your teaching. Stories are always more interesting than just plain lectures. And you don’t even have to weave together a grand epic with elements of math being taught along the way (although that would be pretty cool!). It can be as simple as changing the way you explain a concept. “X is true, but, Y is also true! Therefore…” Doesn’t that seem a little more interesting? By tying together concepts with pseudo-narrative threads using ‘but’s and ‘therefore’s, you can create a lecture that students will want to listen to—after all, they’ll want to know what happens next.

Drawing from some of the science behind learning, Dr Trefor also discussed the idea of cognitive load. This is essentially the amount of stress the student is experiencing when they’re trying to learn. Concepts will always have a certain amount of intrinsic load to them—that is, when you’re trying to learn how to factor a quadratic equation, there’s going to be some amount of stress associated with factoring itself. The part educators can focus on reducing is the extrinsic load, which is the stress caused by outside factors. For example, your factoring lesson may be hindered by having to teach online instead of in-person, or by the fact that you keep thinking 2x3 is 5 (or maybe that’s just me!). Dr Trefor describes how online tools like Maple Learn can help to reduce this extrinsic load. With a way to show and explain a wide variety of concepts without pencil and paper, and to help perform those calculations that are muddying up the underlying concept, you can reduce the cognitive load and help your students learn.

This is just a taste of some of the ideas Dr Trefor talked about in his webinar. If we’ve piqued your interest, you can watch the full thing for yourself here, or by clicking the video below! Be sure to check out Dr Trefor’s channel as well if you want to see his dynamic teaching style in action.

Maple Learn is a great tool for checking the answer to your math problems, but what happens when your answer is wrong and you don’t know why? Knowing there’s a mistake doesn’t actually tell you what that mistake is. Luckily for you, Maple Learn’s newest feature is here to help you out: steps! Now, with the click of a button, you can see full, step-by-step solutions to a wide variety of problems. Instead of endlessly pouring over your work to find that one misplaced negative sign, you can check the steps to quickly and easily spot where you went wrong. Plus, if you’re having trouble figuring out how to approach a problem, you can sneak a peek at the first few steps to get the ball rolling. Full solutions are an invaluable learning tool, and we’re excited to be able to share them with our users.

Getting the steps is simple. When you perform an operation using the Context Panel, you’ll see a “Steps” button appear next to the solution when steps are available. Just click this button! This will take you to a new Maple Learn document showing you a full, detailed solution. Plus, if you want to bring the steps into another document, you can then click the “Copy to Clipboard” button. Checking your solution has never been easier!

What sorts of problems do we have steps for, you might ask? Good question! The answer is a resounding “most of them”. Are you a high schooler? We’ve got steps for factoring, expansion, and solving both equations and linear systems. Doing calculus? Derivatives, integrals, limits, and even solving differential equations all have full solutions available. How about linear algebra? Absolutely! We provide steps for Gauss-Jordan elimination, matrix inversion, finding eigenvalues and eigenvectors, and calculating the determinant! And that’s just a taste of what Maple Learn can do. We’re working constantly to expand our roster of steps, so let us know what you want to see!

I hear what some of you must be thinking: “But what about when I don’t have my computer with me? I never know when I’m going to need a step-by-step solution to a math problem!” If that’s you, then check out the Maple Calculator! The Maple Calculator provides full solutions just like Maple Learn, and you can carry it around in your pocket for math-on-the-go. With Maple Learn and the Maple Calculator on your side, no math problem can stop you now.

Our grand quest to expand and improve Maple Learn is marching steadily along, and we wanted to share with you some of what we’ve been working on! We’ve added some exciting new features that we hope you’ll enjoy.

First up, we’ve added a new command: the Shaded command. This allows you to shade the area beneath a curve—perfect for helping students understand and visualize integrals. It also looks pretty cool, if I do say so myself.

We’ve also added a few new symbols to our roster. You can now enter the not-equals sign through the Numbers and Operators menu, and we’ve added the upper-case Greek alphabet to the Greek symbols menu. Now you can write your documents entirely in Greek! (Or you can just use them as symbols.)

If you’d rather keep the Latin alphabet, but do want to shake things up a bit, we’ve got just the thing for you: you can now choose either a Serif or Sans Serif font. With that and our other text editing tools, you’ll be able to customize the design of your document to your heart’s content.

If you’re one of our users who requested support for mixed fractions, today is your lucky day! Maple Learn now fully supports mixed fractions, and you can convert between mixed and improper fractions using the Context Panel.

We also wanted to take the time to mention some of the bugs we’ve fixed based on user feedback. Thanks to you, we have now:

• Fixed tooltips for floor and ceiling functions
• Resolved the issue of Maple Learn slowing when using asin(x) in equations
• Fixed typesetting bug when entering inequalities with fractions
• Added more support for dealing with units in tables and equations

Thank you to everyone who has sent in their feedback. Your reports are what allowed us to fix these issues. If you ever have feedback for us, whether it’s a bug you’ve found or a feature you’d like to see, use the “Flag a Problem” button to let us know. Maybe it’ll be your suggestion you see here next!

A few weeks ago, some of our sales and marketing representatives decided to spice up some emails with some whimsical poetry. We sent them out to a selection of people, but we thought they were too fun not to share with everyone else! After all, what better way to talk about math products than through poetry? So without further ado, we’re proud to present our collection of mathematical verses:

I.

Math teachers and students, hear this tale of mine

Maple Learn will help you, and it’s online

The interface is freeform, the plots a delight

With Maple behind it, you know they are right

Solve problems from calculus? Easily done!

Algebra, matrices, even trig becomes fun.

Solve line by line, or all in one go

With Maple Learn, you work fast or work slow

Applications are endless, the basic version is free

Fully unlock it for just a small fee

Are you a teacher, from small school or great hall?

Maple Learn Premium is free when you call!

II.

Maple Learn is great, as I hope you recall

But when it comes to math products, that’s not all

Do you have a math problem right before your eyes?

Pull out your phone, is what I advise

A click of your camera, a solution shown to you

Solutions, graphs, and even steps too!

Integrals, matrices, factoring, and more

Maple Calculator solves problems galore

And when find you have even more to do

The problem in the picture reaches Maple Learn too!

Teaching these days can be quite a task

Our products can help you, you’ve only to ask

III.

My final approach, I’ll disturb you no more

Just one final poem for you is in store

On Maple Learn, there’s much more I could say

But instead, here are examples with which you can play

And Maple Calculator too, please don’t forget it

Give it a try, I know you won’t regret it.

My poems are now done, my inspiration depleted

Thanks for your patience as by my poems, you were greeted

We hope you had as much fun reading that as we did writing it. Stay tuned for next week, where we’ll be posting Maple Learn: The Musical! (Just kidding. Unless…?)

With most software, it can take time to learn all the ins and outs and little tricks that make using the software easier. Have you ever learned a new keyboard shortcut for a software you’ve been using for years and found it so useful that you’re kicking yourself not learning it earlier? I certainly have. We thought we’d take the time to highlight five tips and tricks for using Maple Learn, so that you can skip the kicking stage and go straight to the using the cool trick stage!

1. Convert math to text

Here’s the trick that I probably use the most: You can press the spacebar in an empty cell to convert it to text. Just like that! No fiddling with menus, no starting to type and then backtracking as you realize all your words are turning into variables. Just a quick space at then beginning, and then you can type as much text as you’d like. Click the text icon on the left to change it back to math if you change your mind.

2. Assigning variables

Have you ever wanted to assign a value to a variable? Who hasn’t? And luckily, Maple Learn makes it easy to do just that. Just use “:=”. For example, you could say “a:=4”. The variable ‘a’ will now have a value of 4 for that group and all subsequent groups. What’s more, a slider will appear, so that you can adjust the value and see how it affects the rest of the document. You can change the range of the slider using the slider settings (that’s the gear) or disable the slider using the Quick Actions menu (that’s the lightbulb). You can also select “Parameterize …” from the Quick Actions menu when you have an expression that contains variables, and sliders will be automatically created for those variables. Another trick to variable assignments is that if you have a table, you can use the header of your table as a variable that contains all the values in that column. No extra work necessary, Maple Learn does this automatically!

3. Order of execution

One handy feature about Maple Learn is that once you’ve assigned values to variables, you can use those variables again for all the groups that come after it. But hold on, I hear you say. How is that order determined? The Maple Learn canvas is dynamic and doesn’t have a set order to it, so which groups are “after”? Well, I’m glad you asked! The small grey number in the top left-hand corner of the group tells you its place in the order. Maple Learn evaluates any assignments according to this order, which means that a variable assigned in group 3 can be used in any group after 3, but not in groups 1 and 2. The order is determined based on where the groups are on the page, starting with 1 in the top-right corner and moving left to right, top to bottom across the page. That means that if you want to change a group’s place to earlier in the order of execution, all you have to do is move the group higher or to the left! The numbers (and thus the order of execution) will update automatically. Handy.

4. “Reset document” vs. “Clear document”

You may have noticed two seemingly similar buttons in the toolbar: “Reset document” and “Clear document”. Here’s a little secret: they do actually do different things! Say you’re looking at a shared document, like one of the ones in our Example Gallery. You can mess around with it as much as you’d like: change values, add groups to the canvas, zoom around on the graph, whatever suits your fancy. But, if you decide that you don’t like your changes and want to go back to the original document, you can hit “Reset document” and presto! Back to the original. And “Clear document” will, of course, clear the document.

5. Using the keyboard

Are you the type of person who would rather use three keyboard commands to perform a single action than go anywhere near a mouse? Well, you’re in luck, because Maple Learn has several keyboard commands you can use to input functions without even thinking about looking at a menu. You can use standard keyboard math notation and Maple Learn will automatically format it as you would expect: ^ for exponents, * for multiplication, / for division, and so on. What’s more, you can enter “sqrt()” to write a square root symbol, and you can type in any trig function and Maple Learn will treat it as that function! You can see a full list of keyboard shortcuts here. All these things are also available through the palette menus, so a variety of workflows are supported.

So there you have it, our top five tricks for using Maple Learn. If you’re looking for a more detailed guide on how to use Maple Learn, check out the How-To pages at the bottom of our Example Gallery. And if you have any tips you’ve found useful for using Maple Learn, let us and your fellow MaplePrimes users know in the comments!

Has this ever happened to you? You’re using Maple Learn, and having a grand old time, but suddenly! The horror! You notice a bug! Of course, it’s a shocking experience to realize that our products are not, in fact, flawless, but unfortunately it’s true. There are bugs. But, what’s this? There’s a glimmer of hope on the horizon… the Flag a Problem button! By using the Flag a Problem button, you can let us know about the problem you found, and with the power of our mighty development team, we’ll fix it! Yes, with our forces combined… we can defeat all of these bugs!

In all seriousness, we really do appreciate your feedback. Whether you’ve spotted a bug or are looking for a new feature, let us know! We’re constantly updating and improving Maple Learn, and user feedback is a hugely important part of this process. For example, we had a user suggest that Maple Learn treat Δt as a single entity, as in physics that notation is used to mean a change in time rather than Δ times t. And we’re happy to announce that this is now a feature! Here’s just a taste of some of the other things we’ve changed based on user feedback:

• Can now use the Context Panel to evaluate operations with matrices
• Maximum number of intersection points shown has increased to 20
• Intersection points now shown for parametric equations and circles
• Using the Context Panel no longer scrolls the page
• Quick Actions menu no longer parameterizes the f of f(x)
• Fixed display bug for inverse trig functions

Evidently, not every piece of feedback we get is a feature request. Sometimes there’s bugs! And we want to hear about those too. In all honesty, I think it’s pretty neat to see the bugs I’ve reported being fixed. It wasn’t too long ago that I noticed a small error with tables—when the header of the table had a subscript, pressing the down arrow jumped to the next group instead of the next row. I reported it, and now it’s fixed! I can’t help but feeling a little smug, like I’m the one who fixed it. Of course, the credit for the actual code goes to our developers. But it is also true that they wouldn’t have fixed it if no one had pointed it out. Truly, teamwork makes the dream work. And if you want to feel smug about the bug you pointed out being fixed, or the feature you asked for being added, then head on over to that Flag a Problem button. Let us know what you want to see and we’ll listen. What’s more, we’ll be making more posts every now and then to let you know about what’s new with Maple Learn and what we’ve changed based on your feedback. That way you have something to print out and frame on your wall as proof of the contribution you’ve made to Maple Learn! (Or I suppose you could just read it. But where’s the fun in that?)

Over the last few months, we’ve had the honour of working with some fantastic online content creators who share our goals of helping make math accessible to students. We wanted to take a moment to highlight some of the great things they’ve done and how they’ve been able to use Maple Learn and the Maple Calculator to help explain math concepts to their audiences. Whether you’re looking to learn or searching for ways to make math engaging to others, these content creators are worth checking out!

Much as some may complain about “attention spans these days”, there is definitely merit in being able to clearly explain high school level math in under a minute. If you’re looking for tips and tricks to help you understand math concepts, look no further than Justice the Tutor, whose TikTok is full of easy-to-understand videos explaining how to solve a wide variety of problems. You can check out his video on solving systems of equations here.

I think it’s fair to assume that most people reading this like math, but all of us are multi-faceted individuals—so who’s also into drag? Online Kyne is, and she explains tons of math concepts in a fun, engaging, and sparkly way. Check out her video on 3D plots (and her matching 3D-glasses-themed eye makeup) here!

If you’re looking for more ways to have fun with math, check out Tom Rocks Math, run by the University of Oxford’s Dr Tom Crawford. He rose to fame with his “Naked Mathematician” series, but even his clothed videos explain difficult math topics in ways that are clear and accessible. You can see how he tackles a complex topic like partial differentiation here.

Whether you’re looking for a refresher or to learn something new, Dr Trefor Bazett’s YouTube channel has everything from cool math facts to complete courses on calculus, linear algebra, and more. If you don’t mind feeling called out for that one dumb mistake you made on a test once, this video on common algebra mistakes is a great resource for both students and teachers. What’s more, we’re excited to announce that Dr Trefor Bazett will be hosting a Maplesoft webinar where he’ll be discussing how to design effective interactive learning activities! The webinar will be on June 15, and you can sign up here. This promises to be a fascinating talk and a great way to get tips from someone whose online presence exemplifies his skill at getting people to engage with math, so we hope you’ll check it out.

These content creators are just the tip of the iceberg. We’ve also been working with Bobby Seagull, a math teacher and author, and TikTok personalities nerdynas and tamerxi, whose student-centric content is both fun and useful. For our Japanese audiences, you can also check out Kantaro Suzuki’s videos on solving a variety of math problems, and Takumi’s video where he brought in other YouTubers to compete in a puzzle challenge using the Maple Calculator!

We’re so thrilled to see how these amazing content creators are using Maple Learn and the Maple Calculator to create new content and engage with their audiences. It’s very exciting for us to be working with so many people who share our goals of making math accessible and interesting, and we love seeing what they’ve done with our products. Whether you’re a student looking to further understand your courses, a teacher looking to find more ways to engage with your students, or just someone who wants to learn more about math, these videos are all a fantastic resource. It’s clear that all these content creators have a passion for math, and as people who share that passion, we’re so happy to be working with them to help others find their own interest in math.

We’ve been working hard on Maple Learn since its release, and we wanted to share some of the many updates we’ve made. If there was a feature you were looking for that we didn’t have, it might be time to check again! Here’s just a taste of some of the things we’ve been working on.

Given its name, perhaps it’s not surprising that our focus with Maple Learn is to help students learn math. That’s why we’ve improved many of Maple Learn’s math capabilities, to give students the best experience we can. We’ve added support for piecewise functions and vector norms/magnitudes, and made many improvements to tables based on user feedback. Are you more of a statistician? Well, you’re in luck, because we’ve also added various statistics options to the Context Panel, which allow you to calculate mean, median, linear regression, and more. We’ve also made a handful of improvements to evaluation and assignment that we hope will make Maple Learn more intuitive for users.

Maple Learn isn’t just about math, though—it’s about making math accessible. That means communicating clearly, so luckily, we’ve added several new text editing features to help you do just that. You can now use bold, italics, underline, hyperlinks, and changeable font sizes and colours. You can even collapse the plot window and Context Panel if you need a larger workspace or if your problem doesn’t require them. Now your documents will be both easy to follow and stylish!

Speaking of stylish documents, we’ve also made various improvements to how functions can be visualized. There are a couple I’d like to point out to you: You can plot points by adding values to a table! What’s more, you can then move these points around the plot and your table will update automatically. You can also add points and other geometric plot primitives like line segments and vectors using the commands Point, Segment, and Vector. As well, if you have multiple functions plotted, you can see the intersection points by clicking the “Show special points” button. If points aren’t your style, we’ve also added support for some more types of plots, such as parametric plots. When working with differential equations, you can also plot the vector field for that equation. To learn how to use these features and more, check out the “How To” section at the bottom of our Example Gallery. We’re working on more help documentation everyday to help you use Maple Learn to its full potential.

Finally, we’ve made a handful of miscellaneous changes that should help improve your overall experience with Maple Learn. For example, users can now save a copy of their document. We’ve also translated many of our examples to different languages, and are working on translating more everyday. We hope that all these changes and updates will help you get the most out of Maple Learn. If there are features you’d like to see, don’t hesitate to let us know. We add improvements to Maple Learn regularly, so keep an eye out for future updates on Primes!