I just posted a new poll. Do you have a DVD drive on your primary computer? Maplesoft is considering changing the media we use to distribute our products, and we would like to know what media most of our customers will be able to use.

A long-time member of mapleprimes, Gerald A. Edgar has recently posted a wonderful paper, "Transseries for beginners" up on the arXiv.  It is elementary[1], but not easy, and written in a very engaging style.  For those interested in the mathematics used in some of the darker corners of Maple, this is a great introduction.

I just uploaded a brand new version of MaplePrimes that brings with it a huge number of improvements that should make the site easier and more powerful to use.

The most obvious change is a new WYSYWIG editor that appears on all posting forms. This will allow you to enter posts in the same way that you would in most word processors. You do not need to worry about proper use of HTML tags. The editor has a number of toolbar buttons that make it easy to perform common tasks.

This editor has two buttons specific to MaplePrimes:

• The Maple tag button makes it easy to insert 2-D Maple Math, the same way you would have used the <maple> tag before
• The Upload button uploads a file using the File Manager and automatically inserts a link to the uploaded file into your post.

If you wish to go back to the old HTML style of posting, just click the "Source" button that appears in the toolbar.

We have made several updates to the MaplePrimes Student Forum. First, the theme for the forum and all topics within the forum has been updated. This change will make it easy to distinguish when you are in a different section of the site.

Also, new blocks have been created, seperating the active main forum topics from the student forum topics.

Next, there is a new type of post that you can create, a Maple Software Change Request use this form to send suggestions to Maplesoft about changes that you would like made to our software products. All submissions from this form go directly into our internal Bug tracking database, so they will be seen by developers.

Many users have requested the ability to let the administrators know when they see Spam or other inapproprate content on the site. There is now a new feature that makes this easy. There is a new  "Flag Content" link that appears on all Posts and Comments. If you want the administrators to take note of any posts, please click this link.

 

There have also been many smaller updates throughout the site. I hope that you are happy with the updates. Please comment on this post if you find any problems or would like any more changes.

 

Update - Comments have been closed on this post since it has become difficult to follow the many threads of discusson. Please post to the MaplePrimes suggestions forum with any comments that you have on the new site.

Stephanie Rozek chats with Fr. Mike May, from St. Louis University, during the Joint Mathematics Meetings in San Diego. He discusses his work with Maple, and especially how he uses it to teach courses in cryptography. A recording of his lecture “Using Maple worksheets to enable explorations of cryptography with minimal background” follows.

We are pleased to announce the winners of the Great Application Contest. First prize is awarded to Dr. Jason Schattman, for his entry Can a Square Roll?, an exploration of the "Renaissance Man of calculus problems", the square wheel problem. The runner-up is Prof. Mario Lemelin, for his Pré-test en Mathématique, a Maple-based questionnaire that lets beginning differential calculus students test their secondary school mathematics comprehension. These and many other Maple applications can of course be viewed on the Maple Application Center. Congratulations to both!

We are pleased to announce the winner of the monthly Maple Mentors Awards for December. The winner for December is Acer. Acer will receive a prize of his choice to thank him for his involvement with the MaplePrimes community. Congratulations and keep up the good work!!

We are pleased to announce the winners of the monthly Maple Mentors Awards for October and November. The winner for October is Douglas Meade and Georgios Kokovidis has won for November. Douglas Meade and Georgios Kokovidis will receive a prize of their choice to thank them for their involvement with the MaplePrimes community. We have received many emails nominating these individuals. One member had this comment concerning the help given by Douglas Meade:

How do I get anything to work with the differential algebra package with(diffalg)? Maple does not recognize its own commands and then makes things worse by crashing my computer. I've had to pull the plug on my computer at least twice. For instance, whenever I try to type "differential_ring" as soon as I type the underscore, Maple puts me into a subscript mode. Also, there seem to be TWO packages of commands for everything: e.g. with(linalg) and with(LinearAlgebra) with(diffalg) and with(DifferentialAlgebra) which overlap tremendously! Also, sometimes [[a,b],[c,d]] is recognized as a matrix and sometimes it is not. Changing it to

Below is a link to a file I uploaded showing an example of using assigning the value obtained from eval() to a variable and then using evalf() versus using eval() inside of evalf(). The fact that there is some difference is not surprising; it's the sheer amount of difference that amazes me--up to 100%! Do also note that the difference "settle down" over time, which is to be expected. View 413_odd_rounding_example.mw on MapleNet or

I present the following:

[> restart;
[> a1:= foo = bar;
                             a1 := foo = bar
[> a2:= blam = foo = bar;
Error, `=` unexpected
[> a3:= blam = a1;
                       a3 := blam = (foo = bar)

The fact that the definition of a2 (correctly) throws an error and the definition of a3 does not can lead to some odd errors down the way. I disagree with Maple's choice not to say that the assignment of a3 is in error.

Maplesoft just launched a brand new section to our website, the Maple T.A. Content Center. This is a new site that contains great content that can be used in Maple T.A. The content center co-exists alongside the Maple Application Center as a dedicated location for Maple T.A. Content.

You will find content that can be dropped in for Drill & Practice, Homework and Testing, all in different subject areas. You can also access Maple T.A. Tips & Techniques as well as Maple T.A. Documentation & How-Tos.

Users can also submit their own content to the database. Once you have submitted content, it is easy for you to edit the content through the new My Content page which also lists any Maple Applications or Books that you have contributed to Maplesoft.com.

Please visit the Content Center at www.maplesoft.com/tacontent and leave your comments here.

Got a Maple application that will knock our socks off? Something with cool images, elegant math, or just a great introduction to using Differential Equations? We want to see it! Maplesoft is running a contest to find the best new Maple applications out there. To enter, simply contribute your document on the Maple Application Center, including the line “The Maplesoft Great Application Contest” in the Comments box. (However, all submissions to the Maple Application Center will automatically be considered.) Submissions must be received by January 15, 2008. One grand prize will be awarded, consisting of one of:

Apple iPod Nano Canon Powershot digital camera A460 4.5” (114mm) reflector telescope Deluxe wooden chess set

Runner-up winners will receive their choice of:

Maplesoft laser pointer pen Maplesoft mug Maplesoft hat

Submission Guidelines: Award-winning applications will:

Be created in Maple 11 Make use of the new Maple “Document Interface” including 2-D math input Be well-formatted and laid out; for instance, you could use tables to format your document

They may additionally have some of the following characteristics:

Use Embedded Components Use the “Point-and-Click” paradigm

Make sure your application includes instructions. Some things to consider while writing the instructions are whether the document can be modified and re-executed, if a user will interact with the document using Embedded Components, and whether a user needs to follow instructions to use interactive tools. The following Maple documents are good examples of appropriate applications:

“Just Move it Over There, Dear!” Classroom Tips and Techniques: Eigenvalue Problems for ODEs - Part 3 Double Wishbone Suspension

I think that I will start moving to file all of my bug/error/oversight complaints in blog entries. This way (in theory), they are more easily indexed on this site. So, I was playing around with a procedure today: [>restart; testproc:= proc(Q::`=`) local a; ##IF STATEMENT## return a; end proc: [> The if statement noted in the procedure always took on the following appearance: if #Check if lhs(Q)=a# then #assign rhs(Q) to a#;fi; Writing my procedure as above ensured that the restart would be executed every time I changed my if statement. My first if statement went like this:

We are pleased to announce the first winners of the monthly Maple Mentors Awards. Jacques Carette and Robert Israel will receive a prize of their choice to thank them for their involvement with the MaplePrimes community. Jacques has consistently been a valuable member of MaplePrimes, posting clear and insightful information on advanced topics. Robert in particular has been active in the Student Forums on MaplePrimes since their inception and we would like to recognize this. One member had these comments on the two: