Abstract

I'm tempted to advertise this as “Not Your Parent's Maple”, but on the off-chance that Pedro Gonnet drops in (or watches the recording), I won't. Maple is a computer algebra system and a PSE (Problem Solving Environment) and has been in wide use since its invention in the early 1980's. A lot has changed since then. In this first hour I will give an overview: Getting Started, What you can and can't do in Computer Algebra; Linear Algebra (actually I am going to “punt” that and let you read our chapter in the CRC Handbook of Linear Algebra, Leslie Hogben ed, 2nd ed; there is an online copy you can read in the Betty and Gordon Moore Library); and choose from about a dozen other topics including integration, differential equations, solving multivariate polynomial systems, and a listing of the current packages in Maple (more than a hundred and forty of them).