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Control the display of numbers?

Posted on 2008-02-08 18:10 By sreid (Maple Rating 1 11)
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I'm using Maple TA with first-year business students.

How do I control the display of numbers in Maple TA questions? If I define a variable to be 10000, it shows up as 100,000, which is easy to read. If I do some simple arithmetic, the result may show as 50000, which is easy for students to mistake as 500000 or 5000.
Another example is when I try rounding numbers. For instance, I want a random sample of size 8 from a normal distribution, and I'll have students do some calculations. I am going to call these numbers incomes, and I would like them to be rounded to the nearest 100. I've used the following algorithm, which works in Maple:
$a = maple("Statistics[Sample]('Normal'(30000, 10000), 8)");
$v1 = maple("evalf($a[1],3)");
...
However, in Maple TA, the result is written in scientific notation, like .315E05. I have business students and the notation is irrelevant and confusing. Can I control how numbers display, in ordinary "comma" notation?

 

Thanks in advance

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Some help

Comment on 2008-02-11 17:42 from jaytreiman (Maple Rating 1 40)

If you want to get out that format you can try the following code
in MapleTA:

$d=maple("Statistics[Sample]('Normal'(30000, 10000), 8);
map(x->100*(round(x/100)),%);
");
$e=maple("$d[1];
");
$f=$e;

I do not know how to make Maple put in the commas,
but MapleTA does it automatically for integrers.

Does this help?

Controlling the display of numbers

Comment on 2008-02-19 15:50 from sreid (Maple Rating 1 11)

That works very well, with the f's being printed with commas.

Just to make sure I understand it:

The map function applies the rounding to all the members of the array. The e and f variables are just to change the variable type. The e seems to be exactly an integer, but displays with no comma, so it is still floating point. The f is an integer, and displays with a comma. Perfect.

Why the repeated semicolons and the quote and bracket on a separate line?

Thanks for the help

Stephen

Strange things

Comment on 2008-02-19 20:47 from jaytreiman (Maple Rating 1 40)

The extra semicolons are from force of habit with Maple and the extra lines are put in by the MapleTA question editor.

 

Your understanding is the same as mine.  The $e is a Maple variable, with its formatting.  The $f is a MapleTA variable, with its formatting.

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