I am happy to announce that registration for Maple Conference 2021, to be held Nov. 2-5, is now open! The event is once again virtual and free this year. On our home page, you can find information about our keynote presentations. Our keynote speakers this year are Dr. Veselin Jungic, Dr. Evelyne Hubert and Dr. Laurent Bernardin.

The Agenda & Event Format page contains preliminary information about the event and will be updated as the agenda develops. This page describes two add-on workshops that are also free of charge: "Maple Programming: Beyond the Basics" and "Advanced Problem Solving with Regular Chains".

You can register for both the conference and the add-on workshops here: Maple Conference 2021. I hope to see you all in November!

The deadline to submit a presentation proposal for the Maple Conference 2021, to be held Nov. 2-5, 2021, has been extended to June 13, 2021.

We invite submissions of proposals for presentations on a range of topics related to Maple, including Maple in education, algorithms and software, and applications. All presenters will be given the option of submitting a full paper, which will undergo peer review, and if accepted, be included in the conference proceedings.

More about the themes of the conference, how to submit a presentation proposal, and the program committee can be found here: Call for Presentations.

We hope to see you at Maple Conference 2021!

Some of you know me from my occasional posts on Maple’s typesetting and plotting features, but today, I am here in my new role as co-chair (along with Rob Corless of Western University) of the 2021 Maple Conference. I am pleased to announce that we have just opened the Call for Presentations.

This year’s conference will be held Nov. 2 – Nov. 5, 2021. It will be a free virtual event again this year, making it an excellent opportunity to share your Maple-related work with others without the expenses and inconveniences of travel.

Maple Conference 2021 invites submissions of proposals for presentations on a range of topics related to Maple, including Maple in education, algorithms and software, and applications. All presenters will be given the option of submitting a full paper, which will undergo peer review, and if accepted, be included in the conference proceedings.

Presentation proposals are due June 1, 2021.

You can find more information about the themes of the conference, how to submit a presentation proposal, and the program committee on Maplesoft Conference Call for Presentations.

Registration for attending the conference will open in June. Another announcement will be made at that time.

I sincerely hope that all of you here in the Maple Primes community will consider joining us for this event, whether as a presenter or attendee.

Last week, my colleague Erik Postma and I had the pleasure of spending a few hours with a group of bright and motivated high school students at the Math for Real: High School Math Solves Real Problems workshop held at the Fields Institute for Research in Mathematical Sciences in Toronto, and sponsored by the Fields Institute and NSERC PromoScience. The purpose of this three-day workshop was to train students for the International Mathematical Modeling Challenge, also known as IM²C.

The IM²C is hosted by York University and run by the IM²C-Canada committee, consisting of parents and high school teachers, as well as faculty and students in York’s Department of Mathematics and Statistics. In this competition, students working in small teams have five days to solve a mathematical modelling problem in diverse application areas. To support the “Real World” aspect of the contest, students are expected not just to showcase their mathematical creativity and problem-solving skills, but they are also asked to clearly communicate their analyses and conclusions through a written report and visualizations.

The contest allows students to use appropriate software tools to help them with their tasks. Of course I am biased but I can’t help thinking that Maple is the perfect tool for students wanting to do a combination of prototyping, modelling, visualization and document-preparation. The IM²C organizers also thought that the students could benefit from our software, so Erik gave an hour-long introduction to Maple. I was impressed by the students’ enthusiastic remarks and sometimes challenging questions, though admittedly they were partly motivated by the chance to receive as prizes our highly coveted limited-quantity “Math Matters” t-shirts.

The workshop also introduced the students to other software products, taught modelling and writing skills, and had them work on fun practice problems. Over the lunch break, I was struck by the sense of camaraderie at this event, which probably should not have surprised me, as unlike many other competitions involving mathematics, this one is a true team-based activity. Both Erik and I are eager to see what the students will be doing with Maple. Responding to the students’ enthusiasm and interest, Maplesoft has agreed to offer complimentary Maple licenses to all students participating in IM²C. 

As a Corporate Affiliate of the Fields Institute, Maplesoft is pleased to provide training and support to students and researchers that come to Fields for its many events. Developers like myself are encouraged to participate in the institute’s events when possible, and I’ve had the opportunity to attend a number of workshops in the past few years. I encourage you to look at their wide range of activities and to consider visiting the culturally diverse city of Toronto!

New color schemes for plotting have been added to Maple 2016. They are summarized here. You can also see more details on the plot/colorscheme help pages, which have been reworked (hopefully in a way that makes them more useful to you).

We released a new video a few weeks ago describing one of these features: coloring by value. The worksheet I used for the video is available here: ColorByValueWebinar.mw