Was Maple 8 the last before the introduction of gmp into Maple? And the last before the introduction of the Standard Java GUI?

Could it be thought to have been more stable than its immediate successor in certain areas? Or faster, than 9, for some things? Or could it be that it improved considerably upon Maple 7? Some might feel that, having found a reliable version, it could be kept.

These sorts of things might get into some users' mindset. Myself, I find Maple 10 and Maple 11 to be better.

acer

Note that you should post this query in the MaplePrimes Student Forum rather than in the poll section! In doing so, you will get more answers.

Anyway, the main differences between the two packages are that Student[LinearAlgebra]

1. uses exact arithmetic and
2. assumes unknown coefficients to be real rather than complex.

From the online help, the section "Overview of the Student Linear Algebra Package" reads,

LinearAlgebra in the Maple System
Linear algebra operations and data structures are used throughout the Maple system and by a wide variety of users, from students in a classroom to professionals solving large, real world problems. Certain aspects of the design of Maple support for linear algebra address the needs of the former group (for example, syntactic shortcuts for common operations), while others address the needs of the latter group (for example, using hardware precision for floating-point computations, and computing over the complex numbers).

In the Student[LinearAlgebra] subpackage, the default environment has been slightly modified from that of the broader Maple context, in that floating-point computations are not routinely carried out using hardware precision, and symbols are generally assumed to represent real, rather than complex, quantities. Both of these defaults, as well as others, can be controlled through the SetDefault command.

You can reach the document of the package in the help browser -> Table of Contents -> Student Package -> Linear Algebra.

Regards,
--
Jean-Marc

Let's have a shootout. What area of mathematics or computing should Maplesoft throw more resources at ? You can vote to make something good into cutting edge, or to shore up a weak spot. Here are my suggested options:

- calculus: integration, limits, series, etc
- algebra: polynomials, linear algebra, group theory, etc
- differential equations: odes, pdes, daes, etc
- discrete mathematics: combinatorics, graph theory, etc
- number theory: integer computations, cryptography, etc
- numerics: solving, optimization, approximate algorithms, etc
- statistics: simulations, finance, etc
- simplification: assumptions, functions, etc
- education: student packages, tutors, etc
- connectivity: interface with other programs, networking, etc
- graphics: 2d/3d plots, animation, graphical interface, etc
- speed: I don't care, just give me high performance!!!
- usability: I don't care, just make it easy!!!
- something else (specify in comments)

I know I missed a few, but it was getting too long.