Maplesoft regularly hosts live webinars on a variety of topics. Below you will find details on upcoming webinars we think may be of interest to the MaplePrimes community.  For the complete list of upcoming webinars, visit our website.

Introduction to the Maple T.A. MAA Placement Test Suite – Part #2

This webinar will provide attendees with a more detailed guide to the Maple T.A. MAA Placement Test Suite. The presentation will go beyond the basics to introduce each type of placement test, including algorithmic tests, calculator-based tests, concept readiness tests, and more. A few topics will be explored in the context of each different test type. The presentation will conclude with an explanation of how to set cut-off scores for your institution, as well as how the placement tests were created and validated by the Mathematical Association of America.

To join us for the live presentation, please click here to register.

Creating Questions in Maple T.A. – Part #3

This presentation is the third installment of a series that explores question authoring in Maple T.A., Maplesoft’s testing and assessment solution for courses involving mathematics. This final webinar will focus on creating advanced Maple-graded questions using intuitive algorithms.

In case you missed them, the first webinar in the series provided an overview of the question repository and how to create various types of basic questions. The second webinar in the series focused on how to create better questions using the question designer, and introduced more advanced question types such as sketch and free body diagram. 

To join us for the live presentation, please click here to register.

Hey Everyone:

I was wondering what are your favorite and most useful code snippets that you often use. Maybe ones that are in your initialization code? Maybe ones that speed up something that you often do in maple? Maybe ones that you've seen on this and other websites and adopted for your own purposes?

For fun, I attach my init.mpl (.txt here, as .mpl attachments are not allowed by mapleprimes) here init.txt

Some of the snippets that I use the most are also listed below:

#rearrange curves inside an already created plot, so that certain curves are "on top" of the other ones.
#discussed here:
#http://www.mapleprimes.com/questions/201626-Order-Of-Curves-In-A-Plot
rearrangeCurves:= proc(
     v_items::specfunc(anything, PLOT),
     v_reorder::list([integer,integer]):= []
)
local p, curves, rest;
     (curves,rest):= selectremove(type, v_items, specfunc(anything, CURVES));
     curves:= < op(curves) >:         
     for p in v_reorder do
          curves[p]:= curves[p[[2,1]]]
     end do;
     PLOT(convert(curves,list)[], op(rest))
end proc:


#for numerical differentiation
#based on the idea from:
#http://www.mapleprimes.com/posts/119554-Data-Interpolation
#example use:
#alist:=[seq(i, i=0..10, 0.1)]:
#data:=map(x->evalf(sin(x)), alist):
#plot(alist, data);
#plot([cos(x), 'num_diff(x, LinearAlgebra:-Transpose(Matrix([alist,data])))'], x=1..10, thickness=5, linestyle=[solid, dot], color=[blue, red]);
num_diff:=proc(x, v_data, v_options:=[method=spline, degree=3])
 #v_data is a matrix
 #TODO: let the data be in a more arbitrary format that ArrayInterpolation understands, but keep x as first var
 evalf(D[1](x->CurveFitting:-ArrayInterpolation(v_data, [x],v_options[])[])(x));
end:

#extract nth columns/rows from a matrix
#these only work if have a 2d object... should be updated to also work
#with 1d row/column vectors
#Example use cases
#A := LinearAlgebra:-RandomMatrix(20, 20, outputoptions = [datatype = float[8]]);
#nthColumns(A, 2); #Every other column
#nthRows(A, 10)[.., 1..3]; #Every 10th row, but show only first 3 columns
nthColumns:=proc(v_m, v_n)
  v_m[..,[seq(i, i=1..rtable_size(v_m)[2], v_n)]]
end:
nthRows:=proc(v_m, v_n)
  v_m[[seq(i, i=1..rtable_size(v_m)[1], v_n)],..]
end:


#saves a png plot
savePlot:=proc(v_p, v_fileName, v_w:="800", v_h:="500")
    plotsetup("png", plotoutput=v_fileName, plotoptions=cat("quality=100,portrait,noborder,width=",v_w,",height=",v_h));
    print(plots[display](v_p));
    Threads[Sleep](2):
    fclose(v_fileName):
    plotsetup(default);
end:

Currently calculations: equations, regression analysis, differential equations, etc; to mention a few of them; are developed using traditional methods ie even are proposed and solved by hand and on paper. In teaching our scientists and engineers use the chalkboard as a way to reach students and enable them to solve their calculation. To what extent Maple contributes to research on new mathematical models applied science and engineering ?. Maplesoft appears as a proposal to resolve problems with our traditional proposed intelligent algorithms, development process, embedded components, and not only them but also generates type applications for Apple ipad tablets signature. Based on the computer algebra system Maple Maplesoft gives us the package which works exactly like we were on our work. I will show how mathematics is developed from a purely basic to reach modeling differential equations applied to education and engineering. Also visualizare current techniques for developing applications for mobile devices.

link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FdRUSgfPBoc

ECI_2015.pdf

Atte.

Lenin Araujo Castillo

Physics Pure

Computer Science

We’ve just released a free maintenance release to MapleSim 7. This update includes improvements to MapleSim, the MapleSim Battery Library, and the MapleSim Connector for FMI. For details, see the MapleSim 7.01 update page.

From MapleSim, you can get this update from Help>Check for Updates, or download it from the update page. (If Check for Updates doesn't find anything, please try again tomorrow.)

eithne

Happy New Year! Now that 2014 is behind us, I thought it would be interesting to look back on the year and recap our most popular webinars. I’ve gathered together a list of the top 10 academic webinars from 2014 below. All these webinars are available on-demand, and you can watch the recording by clicking on the webinar titles below.

-----------------------------------------------

See What’s New in Maple 18 for Educators

In this webinar, an expert from Maplesoft will explore new features in Maple 18, including improved tools for developing quizzes, enhanced tools for visualizations, updated user interface, and more.

Introduction to Teaching Calculus with Maple: A Complete Kit

During this webinar you will learn how to boost student engagement with highly interactive lectures, reinforce concepts with built-in “what-if” explorations, consolidate learning with carefully-constructed homework questions, and more.

Maplesoft Solutions for Math Education

In this webinar, you will learn how Maple, The Möbius Project, and Maplesoft’s testing and assessment solutions are redefining mathematics education.

Teaching Concepts with Maple

This webinar will demonstrate the Teaching Concepts with Maple section of our website, including why it exists and how to use it to help students learn concepts more quickly and with greater insight and understanding.

Revised Calculus Study Guide - A Clickable-Calculus Manual

This webinar will provide an overview of the Revised Calculus Study Guide, the most complete guide to how Maple can be used in teaching and learning calculus without first having to learn any commands.

Clickable Engineering Math: Interactive Engineering Problem Solving

In this webinar, general engineering problem-solving methods are presented using clickable techniques in the application areas of mechanics, circuits, control, and more.

Hollywood Math 2

In this second installment of the Hollywood Math webinar series, we will present some more examples of mathematics being used in Hollywood films and popular hit TV series.

Robotics Design in Maple and MapleSim

In this webinar, learn how to quickly create multi-link robots by simply defining DH parameters in MapleSim. After a model is created, learn to extract the kinematic and dynamic equations symbolically in Maple.

Introduction to Maple T.A. 10

This webinar will demonstrate the key features of Maple T.A. from both the instructor and student viewpoint, including new features in Maple T.A. 10.

The Möbius Project: Bringing STEM Courses Online

View this presentation to better understand the challenges that exist today when moving a STEM course online and to find out how the Maplesoft Teaching Solutions Group can help you realize your online course vision.

-----------------------------------------------

Are there any topics you’d like to see us present in 2015? Make sure to leave us a comment with your ideas!

Kim

Maplesoft regularly hosts live webinars on a variety of topics. Below you will find details on an upcoming webinars we think may be of interest to the MaplePrimes community.  For the complete list of upcoming webinars, visit our website.

Creating Questions in Maple T.A. – Part #2

This presentation is part of a series of webinars on creating questions in Maple T.A., Maplesoft’s testing and assessment system designed especially for courses involving mathematics. This webinar, which expands on the material offered in Part 1, focuses on using the Question Designer to create many standard types of questions. It will also introduce more advanced question types, such as sketch, free body diagrams, and mathematical formula.

The third and final webinar will wrap up the series with a demonstration of math apps and Maple-graded questions.

To join us for the live presentation, please click here to register.

Clickable Calculus Series – Part #1: Differential Calculus 

In this webinar, Dr. Lopez will apply the techniques of “Clickable Calculus” to standard calculations in Differential Calculus. 

Clickable Calculus™, the idea of powerful mathematics delivered using very visual, interactive point-and-click methods, offers educators a new generation of teaching and learning techniques. Clickable Calculus introduces a better way of engaging students so that they fully understand the materials they are being taught. It responds to the most common complaint of faculty who integrate software into the classroom – time is spent teaching the tool, not the concepts.

To join us for the live presentation, please click here to register.

Maplesoft regularly hosts live webinars on a variety of topics. Below you will find details on an upcoming webinars we think may be of interest to the MaplePrimes community.  For the complete list of upcoming webinars, visit our website.

Creating Questions in Maple T.A. – Part #2

This presentation is part of a series of webinars on creating questions in Maple T.A., Maplesoft’s testing and assessment system designed especially for courses involving mathematics. This webinar, which expands on the material offered in Part 1, focuses on using the Question Designer to create many standard types of questions. It will also introduce more advanced question types, such as sketch, free body diagrams, and mathematical formula.

The third and final webinar will wrap up the series with a demonstration of math apps and Maple-graded questions.

To join us for the live presentation, please click here to register.

Clickable Calculus Series – Part #1: Differential Calculus 

In this webinar, Dr. Lopez will apply the techniques of “Clickable Calculus” to standard calculations in Differential Calculus. 

Clickable Calculus™, the idea of powerful mathematics delivered using very visual, interactive point-and-click methods, offers educators a new generation of teaching and learning techniques. Clickable Calculus introduces a better way of engaging students so that they fully understand the materials they are being taught. It responds to the most common complaint of faculty who integrate software into the classroom – time is spent teaching the tool, not the concepts.

To join us for the live presentation, please click here to register.

Naive simplification of  to results in a pair of functions that agree on only part of the complex plane. In this application, the enhanced ability of Maple 18 to find and display branch cuts of composite functions is used to explore the branch cuts and regions of agreement/disagreement of f and F.

The algorithm by which Maple calculates branch cuts for square-root functions involves squaring, to remove the square root, and solving appropriate equations and inequalities. Unfortunately, this process is inherently prone to introducing spurious solutions, in which case the returned branch cut is not correct. One such instance in which a spurious solution arises is in the calculation of the branch cut for f; a best suggestion for dealing with such errors is found in the application.

Application: Branch Cuts for a Product of Two Square Roots

For those interested in learning more, the design for the new branch-cut facility in Maple 18 is inspired by the following paper:

England, M., Bradford, R., Davenport, J. H., and Wilson, D. 2013.  Understanding branch cuts of expressions. In: Carette, J., Aspinall, D., Lange, C., Sojka, P. and Windsteiger, W., eds.  Intelligent Computer Mathematics. Berlin: Springer, pp. 136-151. (Lecture Notes in Computer Science; 7961)

For those who have the Clickable Calculus Study Guide for Maple 18, please note that we have released an update to this ebook, which provides corrections and improvements to the text and examples. 

This update is available through the automatic updates system (Tools>Check for Updates) and from the download section of our website.

eithne

I am very happy to announce the addition of 36 new videos to the Maple T.A. Tutorial section on the Maplesoft website. These videos demonstrate how to create questions using each of the different question types in Maple T.A. You’ll find videos for multiple choice, true and false, maple-graded, mathematical formula, and much more, including the new graph sketching and free-body diagram questions introduced in Maple T.A. 10.

Jonny
Maplesoft Product Manager, Maple T.A.

A new release of the Maple T.A. MAA Placement Test Suite  is now available.

The latest release takes advantage of the streamlined interface, accessibility from tablets, and other new features of Maple T.A. 10. It also includes new testing content to determine if your students understand the concepts needed for success in their algebra and precalculus courses; new parallel versions of the calculus concepts readiness test; and improved searching and browsing of testing content.

To learn more, visit What’s New in Maple T.A. MAA Placement Test Suite 10.

eithne

A customer on Twitter recently asked why Maple gives the following result:

The issue here is that the  in  is the same as the integration variable. 140 characters is not a lot to work with for a reply, so here is a longer explanation.

First, note that the process of integration treats the integration variable differently than the other variables, so that replacing another variable by the integration variable has a different effect depending on whether the replacement is done before or after the integration is performed. Consider this simple example:

In other words, integration does not commute with substitution. This is a fundamental property of integration and in fact, Maple's eval has special rules to take this into account when you ask it to replace the integration variable.  For example, if you evaluate the inert form of the integral at , the substitution is performed explicitly:

However, if you try to evaluate at , the evaluation is delayed until after the integral is evaluated:

The eval command knows it shouldn't substitute into an integral when the substitution involves the variable of integration.

However, in the user's example, asking Maple for  is equivalent to substitution directly before the integration is performed, like this:

which of course gives:

Another way to have the two  variables be considered distinct is to explicitly make the integration variable a dummy by declaring it local:

Now the s are treated differently:

Austin Roche

Senior Math Developer

Maplesoft

Download integration_variables.mw

Updates are now available for both Maple 18 and MapleSim 6.4. 

Maple 18.02 contains improvements to many areas, including:

• Rendering of 2-D plots
• Help pages and examples
• Interactive components
• MATLAB 2014a support
• Math engine: Laplace transforms, complex floats, simplify
• Matrix import
• Context menus
• Typesetting
• Memory management
• OpenMaple API
• Physics (details in comments)

To get this update, you can use Tools>Check for Updates from within Maple, or visit Maple 18.02 Downloads. (But depending on when you read this, Check for Updates may not have kicked in yet. If it doesn't find anything, wait until tomorrow morning and try again.)

For those users who haven't upgraded to MapleSim 7 yet, MapleSim 6.4.01 includes:

• Efficiency improvements to the simulation engine, taking advantage of enhancements in Maple 18.02
• Improvements to C code generation for model export
• Improved handling of indexed variables when generating Modelica code

In MapleSim, use  Help>Check for Updates or visit MapleSim 6.4.02 Update. Note that MapleSim 6.4.02 is compatible with Maple 18.02.  Upgrade your Maple 18 installation to Maple 18.02 before installing this MapleSim update.

eithne

Updates are now available for both Maple 18 and MapleSim 6.4. 

Maple 18.02 contains improvements to many areas, including:

• Rendering of 2-D plots
• Help pages and examples
• Interactive components
• MATLAB 2014a support
• Math engine: Laplace transforms, complex floats, simplify
• Matrix import
• Context menus
• Typesetting
• Memory management
• OpenMaple API
• Physics (details in comments)

To get this update, you can use Tools>Check for Updates from within Maple, or visit Maple 18.02 Downloads. (But depending on when you read this, Check for Updates may not have kicked in yet. If it doesn't find anything, wait until tomorrow morning and try again.)

For those users who haven't upgraded to MapleSim 7 yet, MapleSim 6.4.01 includes:

• Efficiency improvements to the simulation engine, taking advantage of enhancements in Maple 18.02
• Improvements to C code generation for model export
• Improved handling of indexed variables when generating Modelica code

In MapleSim, use  Help>Check for Updates or visit MapleSim 6.4.02 Update. Note that MapleSim 6.4.02 is compatible with Maple 18.02.  Upgrade your Maple 18 installation to Maple 18.02 before installing this MapleSim update.

eithne

Updates are now available for both Maple 18 and MapleSim 6.4. 

Maple 18.02 contains improvements to many areas, including:

• Rendering of 2-D plots
• Help pages and examples
• Interactive components
• MATLAB 2014a support
• Math engine: Laplace transforms, complex floats, simplify
• Matrix import
• Context menus
• Typesetting
• Memory management
• OpenMaple API
• Physics (details in comments)

To get this update, you can use Tools>Check for Updates from within Maple, or visit Maple 18.02 Downloads. (But depending on when you read this, Check for Updates may not have kicked in yet. If it doesn't find anything, wait until tomorrow morning and try again.)

For those users who haven't upgraded to MapleSim 7 yet, MapleSim 6.4.01 includes:

• Efficiency improvements to the simulation engine, taking advantage of enhancements in Maple 18.02
• Improvements to C code generation for model export
• Improved handling of indexed variables when generating Modelica code

In MapleSim, use  Help>Check for Updates or visit MapleSim 6.4.02 Update. Note that MapleSim 6.4.02 is compatible with Maple 18.02.  Upgrade your Maple 18 installation to Maple 18.02 before installing this MapleSim update.

eithne