Some Maple Questions and Answers

Blair F. Madore

This document deals with some commonly asked questions about Maple. It will certainly be useful for newer users of Maple and helpful for people trying to support Maple. Some of the questions are simple, others more advanced. At the end of each question I've indicated where you might find relevant information.

• Contents
• Question 1: I'm using nested for loops, and any assignments or other statements I make within the second loop do not appear. At first I didn't think statements in the inner loop were being processed at all but I could force something to print by using lprint. Why don't they print regularly and how can I make them print?
  
• Question 2: I have an expression in three variables () and three symbolic parameters (). I want to find the coefficients of and but Maple seems to treat the expression as a polynomial in six variables. I tried using collect but Maple puts a precedence on the variables. I want them equally weighted. Do I have to write a program to do this?
  
• Question 3: Can I see the Maple source code? How?
  
• Question 4: I generated a Taylor series using the series command and now I want to evaluate it at several values. But I can't seem to get rid of the O(..) term.
  
• Question 5: Now I've converted my series to a polynomial. I've decided to drop the last few terms, those of degree higher than 5. I tried to assign zero to but that gave me a syntax error. Then I tried to substitute zero for but that only zeroed the term.
  
• Question 6: I have assigned a matrix to A. If I just type A; all I get is the name A. I don't see the matrix. Why is this different from a polynomial and how can I see the matrix?
  
• Question 7: Can I print Maple graphs (2D or 3D) even if I don't have a graphics terminal?
  
• Question 8: How do I find out what algorithms Maple uses for a specific function?
  
• Question 9: How can I make Maple pull constants outside the integration?
  
• Question 10: I want to compute the definite integral . How can I tell Maple that is positive? In general, how can I declare a name to be positive, real, integral, even, odd, etc.
  
• Question 11: I want to plot the following piecewise defined function in Maple but I always seem to get an error. Let if and if . I defined as a Maple procedure thus

  
  f := proc(x,y) if x>y then erf(x-y) else erf(y-x) fi end;

  But when I try to plot this I get

  
  > plot3d( f(x,y), x=-2..2, y=-2..2 );
  Error, (in f) cannot evaluate boolean

  
  

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