http://www.mapleprimes.com/posts/41628-AddSum-Revisited en-us 2026 Maplesoft, A Division of Waterloo Maple Inc. Maplesoft Document System Wed, 10 Jun 2026 20:58:34 GMT Wed, 10 Jun 2026 20:58:34 GMT The latest comments added to the Post, Add/Sum revisited http://www.mapleprimes.com/images/mapleprimeswhite.jpg http://www.mapleprimes.com/posts/41628-AddSum-Revisited http://www.mapleprimes.com/posts/41628-AddSum-Revisited?ref=Feed:MaplePrimes:Add/Sum revisited:Comments#comment77684 Perhaps this <a href=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_Friedrich_Gauss#Early_years>anecdote</a> might explain it. acer The latest comments added to the Post, Add/Sum revisited 77684 Tue, 27 Mar 2007 08:42:05 Z acer acer http://www.mapleprimes.com/posts/41628-AddSum-Revisited?ref=Feed:MaplePrimes:Add/Sum revisited:Comments#comment77683 As acer hints, the reason is that, for sufficiently large sums, it is quicker to compute the symbolic formula and plug in the limits than to actually sum the terms. However, if you were actually doing that in a procedure, it would be better to enter the symbolic formula directly rather than have Maple compute it (you can use Maple to compute the formula, then enter it into the procedure). Thus, you'll find that eval(1/2*k*(k+1),k=10^6) is faster than sum(k,k=1..10^6). The latest comments added to the Post, Add/Sum revisited 77683 Tue, 27 Mar 2007 09:24:59 Z Joe Riel Joe Riel http://www.mapleprimes.com/posts/41628-AddSum-Revisited?ref=Feed:MaplePrimes:Add/Sum revisited:Comments#comment77678 Thanks for the feedback. <em>Regards, Georgios Kokovidis Dräger Medical</em> The latest comments added to the Post, Add/Sum revisited 77678 Tue, 27 Mar 2007 15:44:21 Z gkokovidis gkokovidis