Is curry (see Help) what you want?

Do you need a function with a simple closed form? If not, you might consider LibLip, in the Maple Application Center. If so, then please specify more about the form. Also, maybe I should mention that your worksheet uses stats, which has been superseded by Statistics. And some very good numerical routines for minimization are in the Optimization package.

Maybe something like this? Dop:= (n,f) -> ((x,y) -> (x*D[1](f)(x,y)+y*D[2](f)(x,y))^n);

One way might be to ask another student in your class who is doing the same homework assignment.   :))

I asked Maple support for the answer, and they replied, "Given that 2-D input is being used, there is no particular advantage to worksheet mode over document mode". To all those who responded by saying that I should use 1-D … I found your responses interesting—because although I knew that there were lots of Mennonites in the Waterloo region, I never knew that any of you would be so modern as to use Maple! I use 1-D for writing complex procedures. But 2-D input in document mode is great for immediate calculations—even though it is more modern. I highly recommend it.

Wei Li, returning to your question, the answer given by solve is correct, and the imaginary components in the solutions are in fact zero. One way to get the answer you seek is to use evalc, as suggested by JacquesC: map(evalc, [solve(272*c^3-213*c^2+52*c-4 > 0, c)]) Then everything looks nice.

So there was only one comment in response to my posting, and it didn't answer my question.... Hence I would like to ask once more. Here is the question: given that 2-D input is being used, is there any advantage to worksheet mode over document mode? (Previously, there was, because only worksheet mode displayed warnings, but in Maple 11, that has been changed/addressed.)