Download bugs-irrationals.mw

Maple strings contain extended ASCII characters (codes 1..255). 
The international characters such as  î, ș, Å, Ø ,Ă, Æ, Ç are multi-byte encoded. They are ignored by the Maple engine but are known to the user interface which uses the UTF-8 encoding.
The package StringTools does not support this encoding. However it is not difficult to manage these characters using Python commands (included in the Maple distribution now).
Here are the UTF-8 versions of the Maple procedures length and substring.
You may want to improve these procedures, or to add new ones (my knowledge of Python is very limited).

LEN:=proc(s::string) Python:-EvalFunction("len",s) end proc:

SS:=proc(s::string, mn::{integer, range(({integer,identical()}))})
  local m,n;
  if type(mn,integer) then m,n := mn$2 else m:=lhs(mn); n:=rhs(mn) fi; 
  if m=NULL then m:=1 fi; if n=NULL then n:=-1 fi;
  if n=-1 then n:=LEN(s) elif n<0 then n:=n+1 fi;
  if m=-1 then m:=LEN(s) elif m<0 then m:=m+1 fi;
  Python:-EvalString(cat("\"",  s, "\"", "[", m-1, ":", n, "]"  ));
end proc:

LEN("Canada"), length("Canada");
                              6, 6

s:="România":
LEN(s), length(s);
                              7, 8

SS(s, 1..), SS(s, 1..-3), SS(s, 1..1), SS(s, -7..2), SS(s,1), SS(s,-1); 
            "România", "Român", "R", "Ro", "R", "a"

diff(abs(z), z)  returns abs(1, z)  and the latter, for a numeric z, is defined only for a nonzero real z.
However,  functions such as abs(I+sin(t)) are (real) differentiable for a real t and diff should work. It usually does, but not always.

restart
f:= t -> abs(GAMMA(2*t+I)):  # We want D(f)(1)
D(f)(1): 
evalf(%);  # Error, (in simpl/abs) abs is not differentiable at non-real arguments
D(f)(1); simplify(%); 
evalf(%);   # 0.3808979508 + 1.161104935*I,  wrong

The same wrong results are obtained with diff instead of D

diff(f(t),t):   # or  diff(f(t),t) assuming t::real; 
eval(%,t=1);
simplify(%); evalf(%);   # wrong, should be real

To obtain the correct result, we could use the definition of the derivative:

limit((f(t)-f(1))/(t-1), t=1); evalf(%); # OK 
fdiff(f(t), t=1);    # numeric, OK

       0.8772316598
       0.8772316599

Note that abs(1, GAMMA(2 + I)); returns 1; this is also wrong, it should produce an error because  GAMMA(2+I) is not real;
 

Let's redefine now `diff/abs`  and redo the computations.

restart
`diff/abs` := proc(u, z)   # implements d/dx |f(x+i*y|) when f is analytic and f(...)<>0
local u1:=diff(u,z);
1/abs(u)*( Re(u)*Re(u1) + Im(u)*Im(u1) )
end:
f:= t -> abs(GAMMA(2*t+I));
D(f)(1); evalf(%);   # OK now

         0.8772316597

Now diff works too.

diff(f(t),t);
eval(%,t=1);
simplify(%); evalf(%);   # it works

This is a probably a very old bug which may make diff(u,x)  fail for expressions having subespressions abs(...) depending on x.

However it works  using assuming x::real, but only if evalc simplifies u.
The problem is actually more serious because diff/ for Re, Im, conjugate should be revized too. Plus some other related things. 

The Putnam 2020 Competition (the 81st) was postponed to February 20, 2021 due to the COVID-19 pandemic, and held in an unofficial mode with no prizes or official results.

Four of the problems have surprisingly short Maple solutions.
Here they are.

A1.  How many positive integers N satisfy all of the following three conditions?
(i) N is divisible by 2020.
(ii) N has at most 2020 decimal digits.
(iii) The decimal digits of N are a string of consecutive ones followed by a string of consecutive zeros.

add(add(`if`( (10&^m-1)*10&^(n-m) mod 2020 = 0, 1, 0), 
n=m+1..2020), m=1..2020);

       508536

A2.  Let k be a nonnegative integer.  Evaluate  

sum(2^(k-j)*binomial(k+j,j), j=0..k);

        4^k

A3.  Let a(0) = π/2, and let a(n) = sin(a(n-1)) for n ≥ 1. 
Determine whether the series   converges.

asympt('rsolve'({a(n) = sin(a(n-1)),a(0)=Pi/2}, a(n)), n, 4);

a(n) ^2 being equivalent to 3/n,  the series diverges.

B1.  For a positive integer n, define d(n) to be the sum of the digits of n when written in binary
 (for example, d(13) = 1+1+0+1 = 3). 

Let   S =  
Determine S modulo 2020.

d := n -> add(convert(n, base,2)):
add( (-1)^d(k) * k^3, k=1..2020 ) mod 2020; 

        1990