Like most companies today, Maplesoft monitors its website traffic, including the traffic coming to MaplePrimes. This allows us to view statistical data such as how many total visits MaplePrimes gets, how many unique visitors it gets, what countries these visitors come from, how many questions are asked and answered, how many people read but never respond to posts, etc. 

Recently one of our regular MaplePrimes users made the comment that MaplePrimes does not reach new Maple users. We found this comment interesting because our data and traffic numbers show a different trend. MaplePrimes gets unique visitors in the hundreds of thousands each year, and since its inception, it has welcomed unique visitors in the many millions. Based on these unique visitor numbers and the thousands of common searches specifically about Maple that people are doing, we can see that many of these unique visitors are in fact new Maple users looking for resources and support as they begin using Maple. Other visitors to MaplePrimes include people who use Google (or other search engines) to find an answer to a particular mathematics or engineering question, regardless of what mathematics software they choose to use, and Google points them to MaplePrimes. There are some popular posts that were written months, even years ago, that are still getting high visitor views today, showing the longevity of the information on MaplePrimes. 

MaplePrimes gets the majority of its visible activity from a small number of extremely active members. In public user forums around the world, these types of members are given many names – power users, friendlies, evangelists. Every active public user forum has them. On MaplePrimes, it’s this small number of active members that are highly visible. But, what our traffic data reveals is the silent majority. These people, many of them repeat visitors, are quietly reviewing the questions and answers that our evangelists are posting. The silent majority of MaplePrimes visitors are the readers; they are the quiet consumers of information. For every person that writes, comments on, or likes a post, there are thousands more that read it. 

Here are a few more MaplePrimes traffic data points for your reference:

• MaplePrimes is very international and draws people from all around the world. Here are the top 10 countries where the most MaplePrimes visitors come from:

1. USA
2. India
3. Canada
4. Germany
5. China
6. United Kingdom
7. Brazil
8. Australia
9. France
10. Denmark

• Here are the top 5 keywords people are using in their searches on MaplePrimes:

1. Data from plot
2. Physics
3. Sprintf
4. Size of plot
5. Fractal

• MaplePrimes is growing at a very fast rate: Traffic (visitors to the site) and membership size is growing at nearly double the pace it was last year. The total number of posts and questions this year is also much higher compared to the same timeframe last year. 

• This question has been viewed nearly 50,000 times since it was posted in June 2009: http://www.mapleprimes.com/questions/37261-Sinnpi2

• Our top 5 MaplePrimes members have each visited MaplePrimes more than 1200 times and viewed a combined total of more than 10,000 pages (that is total page views, not unique page views). Our top 25 MaplePrimes members have visited at least 250 times each (many of them nearly 1000 times each) and our top 50 MaplePrimes members have visited a combined total of over 23,000 times, visiting nearly 200,000 pages. Thank you! We’re glad you like it. :-)

Philip Yasskin, a long-time Maple user and professor at Texas A&M University is passionate about getting young people engaged in mathematics. One of his programs is SEE-Math: a two-week summer day camp for gifted middle school children interested in math. Maplesoft has been a long-standing supporter of SEE-Math, providing software and prizes for the campers.

A major project in SEE-Math is developing computer animations using Maple. Students spend their time creating various animations, in hopes of taking the top prize at the end of the workshop. A slew of animations are submitted, some with pop-culture references, elaborate plot lines, and incredible detail. The top animations take home prizes, while all animations from that year are featured on the SEE-Math website.

Maplesoft proudly sponsors this event, and many like it, to promote interest in STEM education. To see all of the animations from this year’s SEE-Math camp, please visit: http://see-math.math.tamu.edu/2015/. You can find the animations listed under “Euler,” “Godel,” “Noether,” and “Ramanujan,” found halfway down the page.

Last month, we received a very kind note from a recipient of one of our sponsorships. Maplesoft sponsors several academic and commercial events throughout the year, providing free copies of Maple or MapleSim to lucky attendees. Audrey was one of the winners of the Elgin Community College Calculus Contest, where she won a copy of Maple. Here’s what she had to say:

Thank you so much for the Maple license.  I have become familiar with Maple during the last school year.  At first the commands were like Chinese to me and I had a rough time getting anything done, but once I made a connection between the commands and what they were doing it was a lot easier.  Even without former knowledge of computer programing, the commands are increasingly intuitive.  Maple has been a huge help to me doing my homework and projects, and even as I was studying for the competition it was useful for checking my answers.  Another reason that I love Maple is that it provides visuals for the difficult concepts we learned in class, such as shell method in Calc II and mixed partial derivatives in Calc III.  I enjoy math, but I thank that Maple has enriched my experience along the way.

Thank you again for your generous gift, 

~Audrey~

It’s always nice to hear how students and professionals alike are succeeding with the help of Maple. If you’d like to share your experience, please send an email to customerservice@maplesoft.com or post it here on MaplePrimes.

Recently, a Maplesoft customer service representative received an e-mail from one of our users with the subject line: A Simple Thank You. We wanted to share this message with you, as it demonstrates how the power and flexibility of Maple helped one student get ahead in his studies.

The following is an actual email we received from Eli E., which describes his experience using Maple as a university student.

Hello, my name is Eli...

Some Maplesoft users have been receiving emails that indicate a new patch for Maple software is available. Recipients of this message receive an attachment called Maple_Patch.zip which they are asked to extract using the password MapleSecuirityUpdate1707. Please be advised that this patch did not originate from Maplesoft and should not be opened under any circumstances. Maplesoft is currently investigating further. Please contact