Software at MIT

Name: Maple
Category: Computer Algebra System
Last modified: Th Oct 22, 2009
Problems or Questions?

Contents

• What is Maple? Where does it come from?
• Maple on Athena
• Maple at MIT
• Other Resources

New (6/1/09): Maple 13 is now the default

New (4/23/09): Maple updated to 12.02, 64 bit Linux version added

There is an interactive introductory tutorial

What is Maple? Where does it come from?

Maple is a Computer Algebra System from Maplesoft. It was originally developed by members of the University of Waterloo's Symbolic Computation Group (SCG). Ongoing research and development is now a combined effort between SCG, WMS, and several research organizations including the Centre for Experimental and Constructive Mathematics (CECM) in Burnaby, Canada and the Institute für Wissenschaftliches Rechnen, ETH-Zentrum, in Zürich, Switzerland.

Maple on Athena

Maple Release 13.0 is the current default for all platforms (i.e., this is the version obtained by typing: add maple; maple)

Maple 12 is also available; to launch it now:

       athena% add maple; maple -ver 12.0

Maple at MIT

Maple is an officially supported software package for the MIT Athena Computing Environment. By "officially supported" we mean:

• We try to provide current versions of Maple on all Athena platforms.
• The Athena consultants will help Athena users asking Maple questions in OLC, and maintain a collection of stock answers to common questions.
• There is an introductory Maple on Athena publication (good for basics, though somewhat out of date)
• The Educational Technology Consultants will assist faculty members and TAs who are trying to use Maple for instructional purposes

Members of the MIT community who wish to use Maple on non-Athena machines, or Athena users who need to run Maple while disconnected from the network may obtain Maple under MIT's academic contract through the MIT Volume License Software program (contact vsls-help@mit.edu for more information if you are unable to follow these links). Note that there may have been minor upgrades released by WMS after the software was packaged; for patches and updates, see Maplesoft's web page on patches.

Other Resources

• A comprehensive list of Maple publications is available from http://www.maplesoft.com/company/publications/index.aspx
• The Maple Application Center (maintained by Maplesoft) includes an online tutorial, tour, and user-contributed applications.
• The Maple Advisor Database is a project of the Symbolic Computation Group of the University of British Columbia; it provides advice on how to use and program Maple, answers to common questions, explanations of common error messages and work-arounds for some bugs.
• Three newsgroups which may be of interest are sci.math.symbolic, sci.math.num-analysis, and comp.soft-sys.math.maple.

The following collection of pages is no longer actively maintained, but contains information which may still be useful:

• overviews, hints, and examples for using some of the packages in Maple, primarily designed to assist relatively experienced Maple users;
• some how-to ideas for integrating several issues in order to solve specific Maple-related problems;
• a compilation of materials and commentaries about teaching with Maple;
• a listing of some of the available Maple-related training resources and user documentation from various institutions.

Problems or Questions?

Help with Maple
If you are affiliated with MIT, contact Athena Consulting (on Athena, type "olc"). Otherwise, see the other resources above or contact the vendor for help.

Sending bug reports
Athena users should report problems via the "sendbug" command.

Software at MIT
Questions or suggestions about availability of software on Athena should be sent to 3partysw@mit.edu.

Comments on this page
Questions or comments about this web page should be sent to acs-web@mit.edu.

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