After more than 25 years of leading research in areas such as differential equations, special functions, and computational physics, Edgardo's role with Maplesoft will shift at the end of 2024 as he returns to academic research. At Maplesoft, he will transition into the position of Research Fellow Emeritus. In this role, Edgardo will remain engaged with many of his cherished projects, though he will not have as much time to maintain the intense level of activity that characterized his work for so many years.

Many of you know Edgardo personally or have interacted with him here or on the Maple Beta Forum. I hope you'll join me in wishing him the very best as he begins this new chapter.

We’re thrilled to announce the launch of our new Student Success Platform! Over the past several months, our academic team has dedicated itself to understanding how we can better support institutions in addressing their concerns around student retention rates. The numbers tell a concerning story: In the U.S., nearly 25% of first-year undergraduates don’t complete their studies, and in STEM fields, the numbers are even higher. In both STEM programs and non-STEM programs with math gateway courses, struggles with math are often a key reason students do not, or cannot, continue their studies. This has a profound impact on both the students’ futures and the institution’s revenue and funding.

From what we’re hearing from institutions and instructors, one of the most pressing issues is the lack of readiness among first-year students, particularly in math courses. With larger class sizes and students arriving with varying levels of preparedness, instructors face challenges in providing the personalized support that is essential. Additionally, many students don’t fully utilize existing resources, such as office hours or TA sessions, which increases their risk of falling behind and ultimately dropping out.

Our new Student Success Platform is designed to tackle these issues head-on. It combines all of our existing tools with exciting new features to help students succeed on their own terms—without adding to instructors' already busy workloads. The early feedback has been fantastic, and we can’t wait for you to see the impact it can make.

You can read more about the Student Success Platform here: https://www.maplesoft.com/student-success-platform/

VerifyTools is a package that has been available in Maple for roughly 24 years, but until now it has never been documented, as it was originally intended for internal use only. Documentation for it will be included in the next release of Maple. Here is a preview:

VerifyTools is similar to the TypeTools package. A type is essentially a predicate that a single expression can either satisfy or not. Analogously, a verification is a predicate that applies to a pair of expressions, comparing them. Just as types can be combined to produce compound types, verifications can also be combined to produce compund verifications. New types can be created, retrieved, queried, or deleted using the commands AddType, GetType (or GetTypes), Exists, and RemoveType, respectively. Similarly in the VerifyTools package we can create, retrieve, query or delete verifications using AddVerification, GetVerification (or GetVerifications), Exists, and RemoveVerification.

The package command VerifyTools:-Verify is also available as the top-level Maple command verify which should already be familiar to expert Maple users. Similarly, the command VerifyTools:-IsVerification is also available as a type, that is,

VerifyTools:-IsVerification(ver);

will return the same as

type(ver, 'verification');

The following examples show what can be done with these commands. Note that in each example where the Verify command is used, it is equivalent to the top-level Maple command verify. (Also note that VerifyTools commands shown below will be slightly different compared to the Maple2024 version):

Download VerificationTools_blogpost.mw

Austin Roche
Software Architect
Mathematical Software
Maplesoft

Dear Maple Community,

It has been a year since the passing of Stefan Vorkoetter, who started contributing to the Maple project in the 80s and was a long term member of our development team. 

Here are a few recently published articles about Stefan, that I'd like to share with you:

https://mapletransactions.org/index.php/maple/article/view/18269
https://mapletransactions.org/index.php/maple/article/view/18681

we shall not forget

We are pleased to announce that the registration for the Maple Conference 2024 is now open.

Like the last few years, this year’s conference will be a free virtual event. Please visit the conference page for more information on how to register.

This year we are offering a number of new sessions, including more product training options and an Audience Choice session.
You can find an overview of the program on the Sessions page. Those who register before September 10th, 2024 will have a chance to vote for the topics they want to learn more about during the Audience Choice session.

We hope to see you there!

We are happy to announce another Maple Conference to be held October 24 and 25, 2024!

It will be a free virtual event again this year, and it will be an excellent opportunity to meet other members of the Maple community and get the latest news about our products. More importantly, it's a chance for you to share the work you've been doing with Maple and Maple Learn. 

We have just opened the Call for Participation. We are inviting submissions of presentation proposals on a range of topics related to Maple, including Maple in education, algorithms and software, and applications. We also encourage submission of proposals related to Maple Learn. 

You can find more information about the themes of the conference and how to submit a presentation proposal at the Call for Participation page. Applications are due July 17, 2024.

Presenters will have the option to submit papers and articles to a special Maple Conference issue of the Maple Transactions journal after the conference.

Registration for attending the conference will open in July.  Watch for further announcements in the coming weeks.

I encourage all of you here in the Maple Primes community to consider joining us for this event, whether as a presenter or an attendee!

Kaska Kowalska
Contributed Program Co-Chair

I’m excited to announce that we’ve just launched MapleSim 2024.

The new release has tools that are designed to drive innovation, and overall save you time when creating and developing simulations.

At Maplesoft we are looking to continually enhance our engineering software with new features based on customer feedback, and I’m pleased to share some of the fruits of that labor, and thank the developers, product management team, and  customers that contributed.

The new offering  helps engineers to

• Rapidly Tune Parameters
• Explore Design Concepts
• Expand Modeling Capabilities

For example, the new Rerun panel allows you to significantly cut the time between simulations as you quickly apply different parameter values, initial conditions and even simulation settings between runs. It does this by skipping the formulation steps when there are no structural changes made to the model, and you can even see the plots and results of the different iterations side by side.
You can see it in action in this short demo video.

There is now support for the latest Modelica feature set, so you can import Modelica Libraries that make use of MSL 4.0.0 features, and adds a range of new modeling components to the standard MapleSim libraries (electrical, 1-D mechanical, signal block and more).

MapleSim 2024 also includes more components in the Hydraulic library to support modeling of flow restrictions and adds a Scripting button to add and organize Maple worksheets.

We’ve also applied a whole series of updates to our MapleSim add-on products, including:

• The MapleSim Web Handling Library has new tools for modeling heavier webs, winding of multiple rolls on the same drum, and adding a Switching Nip Roller to swing the web contact points between rollers.
• The MapleSim Connector for FMI can now import and export FMI 3.0.
• The MapleSim CAD Toolbox supports recent software releases from NX™, SOLIDWORKS®, Solid Edge®, Parasolid®, and other CAD tools.
• The MapleSim Heat Transfer Library has gained a new T-junction component for the Water subpackage to improve flow/pressure-drop calculations for systems with branches.

We have an upcoming webinar for you to see the new 2024 features in MapleSim Web Handling Library – you can sign up to register here.

You can find out more about the other new features at the MapleSim What’s New web page, and as always, we are happy to hear your comments and product suggestions.

And if you are new to MapleSim and would like to try building and running a model yourself, you can request a free trial, or contact Maplesoft sales team with any questions.

We've just launched Maple Flow 2024!

You're in the driving seat with Maple Flow - each new feature has a straight-line connection to a user-driven demand to work faster and more efficiently.

Head on over here for a rundown of everything that's new, but I thought I'd share my personal highlights here.

If your result contains a large vector or matrix, you can now scroll to see more data. You can also change the size of the matrix to view more or fewer rows and columns.

You can resize rows and columns if they're too large or small, and selectively enable row and column headers.

If the vector or matrix in your result contains a unit, you can now rescale units with the Context Panel (for the entire matrix) or inline (for individual entries).

A few releases ago, we introduced the Variables palette to help you keep track of all the user-defined parameters at point of the grid cursor.

You can now insert variables into the worksheet from the Variables palette. Just double-click on the appropriate name.

Maple Flow already features command completion - just type the first few letters of a command, and a list of potential completions appears. Just pick the completion you need with a quick tap of the Tab key.

We've supercharged this feature to give potential arguments for many popular functions. Type a function name followed by an opening bracket, and a list appears.

In case you've missed it, the argument completion list also features (when they make sense) user-defined variables.

You can now link to different parts of the same worksheet. This can be used to create a table of contents that lets you jump to different parts of larger worksheets.

This page lists everything that's new in the current release, and all the prior releases. You might notice that we have three releases a year, each featuring many user-requested items. Let me know what you want to see next - you might not have to wait that long!

     Happy Easter to all those who celebrate! One common tradition this time of year is decorating Easter eggs. So, we’ve decided to take this opportunity to create some egg-related math content in Maple Learn. This year, a blog post by Tony Finch inspired us to create a walkthrough exploring the four-point egg. The four-point egg is a method to construct an egg-shaped graph using just a compass and a ruler, or in this case, Maple Learn. Here's the final product: 

     The Maple Learn document, found here, walks through the steps. In general, each part of the egg is an arc corresponding to part of a circle centred around one of the points generated in this construction. 

     For instance, starting with the unit circle and the three red points in the image below, the blue circle is centred at the bottom point such that it intersects with the top of the unit circle, at (0,1). The perpendicular lines were constructed using the three red points, such that they intersect at the bottom point and pass through opposite side points, either (-1,0) or (1,0). Then, the base of the egg is constructed by tracing an arc along the bottom of the blue circle, between the perpendicular lines, shown in red below.

     Check out the rest of the steps in the Maple Learn Document. Also, be sure to check out other egg-related Maple Learn documents including John May’s Egg Formulas, illustrating other ways to represent egg-shaped curves with mathematics, and Paige Stone’s Easter Egg Art, to design your own Easter egg in Maple Learn. So, if you’ve had your fill of chocolate eggs, consider exploring some egg-related geometry - Happy Easter!  

Attention Maple enthusiasts! It gives me great pleasure to announce Maple 2024! Maple 2024 brings together a collection of new features and enhancements carefully designed to enrich your mathematical explorations. Maple 2024 is the result of a lot of hard work by a lot of people, and there is far more in it than I can cover here. But I’d like to share with you some of my favorite features in this release.

AI Formula Assistant

The AI Formula Assistant in Maple 2024 is undoubtedly the feature that excites me the most, especially considering how often I’m asked the question: 'When will Maple include AI features?' This assistant serves as your new mathematical companion and will change the way you look up and enter formulas and equations. Driven by advanced AI technology, it presents a range of relevant options based on your search query. Alongside suggestions, you'll also receive detailed explanations for each formula and its parameters so you can select the one you need, and then you can insert the formula into your document at a click of a button, as a proper Maple expression.

NaturalLanguage Package

The Formula Assistant is built on top of the new NaturalLanguage package, which integrates powerful language models like GPT-4 and ChatGPT from OpenAI into Maple. With this feature, you can leverage large language models to process natural language within Maple. Ask the AI to explain concepts, provide additional details, find specific Maple commands, and more. Of course, since this is a Maple package, you can also use it as a basis to build your own AI-powered applications inside Maple. We’re really looking forward to seeing what you will do with it!

Argument Completion
We’ve had a lot of requests from people who wanted Maple’s command completion features to do even more, and I’m happy to say that Maple 2024 delivers. The new argument completion feature in Maple 2024 is poised to significantly enhance your experience with commands. For many users, including myself, not being aware of all the options a command takes is a challenge, often leading me to refer to help pages for clarification. With argument completion, that's no longer a concern. Just enter the command with the help of the existing command completion feature, then automatic argument completion takes over to guide you through the rest. Give it a try with the 'plot' command!

Check My Work

A personal favorite feature that's gotten even better in Maple 2024 is Check My Work. As someone who has tutored students, I vividly recall their stress before exams, often receiving emails and text messages from them seeking last-minute help. At the time, I found myself wishing the students had a way to check their work themselves, so we would all be less stressed! So I was super excited when we added the first Check My Work feature a couple of years ago, and am very happy that it gets better ever year. In Maple 2024, we’ve expanded its capabilities to support problems involving factoring, simplification, and limits.

Scrollable Matrices:
This feature will definitely resonate with many of the engineers in the Maple Primes community. If you're someone who works with worksheets containing large matrices, you've likely wished that you could scroll the matrices inside your document instead of having to launch a separate matrix browser. With Maple 2024, your wish has come true.

Color Bars

And finally, for those of you who appreciated the addition of color bars in Maple 2023 but wanted to see them extended to more 2D and 3D plots, you'll be delighted to know that this is exactly what we’ve done. We’ve also added new customization options, providing you with greater control over appearance.

This is just a partial glimpse of what's new in Maple 2024. For a comprehensive overview, visit What’s New in Maple 2024.

Time is running out for users of Mathcad^® 15 worksheets.
Engineers who need to retain their historical Mathcad project files are faced with a looming deadline to move the content to another file format.

The good news is that Mathcad 15 users can turn to Maple Flow as an effective replacement design calculation tool. Maple Flow is an advanced calculation tool with a free-form layout that makes it easy for engineers to brainstorm, develop, and document their project designs.

Maplesoft now has an efficient migration solution for moving critical Mathcad content to Maple Flow worksheets. This gives engineers a path to safeguard their critical reference designs, mathematical analyses, and engineering test results.

Why are engineers moving from Mathcad 15?
In 2025, some changes are expected that will severely restrict access to Mathcad 15 software. Here’s some background:

• PTC announced that Mathcad 15 is end-of-sale effective December 2021, restricting license activations for new users.
• Those existing Mathcad 15 customers who bought multiyear license extensions will see them expire by December 2025. After that, those with subscription licenses will not be able to open the app, and will not be able to access their historic design documents.
• One of the significant issues engineers are encountering is that the new version of the software is not directly compatible with their historical Mathcad documents. PTC no longer has the right to distribute software versions with a third-party component, and has opted to use a different symbolic calculation engine in Mathcad Prime® that cannot read and edit the legacy files.
• Another issue is that the Mathcad 15 software does not support Windows 11, so is typically run on Windows 10, a platform that Microsoft will not be supporting after October 2025.
• Without a reliable way to keep accessing their project work in the Mathcad 15 format, engineers are looking for an alternative design worksheet platform.

As a result, engineers with large repositories of these design files now face converting all the worksheets to a new format or risk losing access to valuable design reports, and the possible regulatory consequences.

Maple Flow as a replacement for Mathcad 15
Engineers who want a long-term stable environment for their critical project work can change their design workflow to use Maple Flow for everyday calculation tasks.

The advanced math features and formatting options in Maple Flow make it a good fit for creating (and updating) design documentation and hand calculations, where engineers combine mathematical equations and variables that change regularly, and show the results in a report.

Maple Flow has a short learning curve, and the range of example templates in the Application Center and the customized training all help users quickly get up to speed with Maple Flow commands and formatting features.

How can I migrate Mathcad 15 content to Maple Flow?
Maplesoft has created a series of migration strategies for users of Mathcad software to transition to Maple Flow for ongoing calculation needs or to meet compliance requirements.

For engineers with a handful of worksheets, or where the calculations only span a few pages, it is relatively quick to reenter the calculations directly in Maple Flow. Some steps will need to be updated to the equivalent Maple Flow function, and there is also the opportunity to use features that are not available in Mathcad 15 (or its successor Mathcad Prime), such as advanced signal processing tools, thermodynamic data, and functionality for the analysis of linear systems.

For engineering firms with large repositories of legacy Mathcad 15 files, Maplesoft has developed a convenient path to migrate batches of content into Maple Flow. Maplesoft Engineering Services guide customers through the migration process and apply an efficient Migration Assistant to move the equations, variable definitions, units, layout, and other supported features from Mathcad 15 worksheets to Maple Flow. The content is mapped to the equivalent Maple Flow functionality, so that calculations can be run and developed further. This allows project worksheets and templates to be recreated with the least investment in time.

This image shows a calculation section before and after batch migration into Maple Flow format:

Ongoing support from Maplesoft

Maple Flow was first launched in 2021 and was developed to give engineers a single tool that can perform mathematical analysis and present results in a professional-looking format. There is built-in support for natural mathematical notation and tracking units, and the development roadmap continues to follow a user-focused approach, so new usability enhancements are regular and relevant.

The current release of Maple Flow gives engineers a path to avoid losing legacy calculations and designs previously stuck in Mathcad 15 worksheets and reuse the content for ongoing project work.

If you would like assistance from Maplesoft with migrating large repositories of design worksheets, please contact Maplesoft Sales.

[This is a contributed article by Alex Beilby, Technical Marketing Mgr, Maplesoft]

The Lunar New Year is approaching and 2024 is the Year of the Dragon! This inspired me to create a visualization approximating the dragon curve in Maple Learn, using Maple. 

The dragon curve, first described by physicist John Heighway, is a fractal that can be constructed by starting with a single edge and then continually performing the following iteration process:  

Starting at one endpoint of the curve, traverse the curve and build right triangles on alternating sides of each edge on the curve. Then, remove all the original edges to obtain the next iteration. 

This process continues indefinitely, so while we can’t draw the fractal perfectly, we can approximate it using a Lindenmayer system. In fact, Maple can do all the heavy lifting with the tools found in the Fractals package, which includes the LSystem subpackage to build your own Lindenmayer systems. The subpackage also contains different examples of fractals, including the dragon curve. Check out the Maple help pages here: 

Overview of the Fractals Package  

Overview of the Fractals:-LSystem Subpackage 

Using this subpackage, I created a Maple script (link) to generate a Maple Learn document (link) to visualize the earlier iterations of the approximated dragon curve. Here’s what iteration 11 looks like: 

You can also add copies of the dragon curve, displayed at different initial angles, to visualize how they can fit together. Here are four copies of the 13th iteration: 

Mathematics is full of beauty and fractals are no exception. Check out the LSystemExamples subpackage to see many more examples. 

Happy Lunar New Year! 

The Maple Conference starts tomorrow Oct. 26 at 9am EDT! It's not too late to register: https://www.maplesoft.com/mapleconference/2023/. Even if you can't attend all the presentations, registration will allow you to view the recorded videos after the conference. 

Check out the detailed conference program here: https://www.maplesoft.com/mapleconference/2023/full-program.aspx

Happy Pride Month, everyone! June is a month for recognizing and celebrating the LGBT+ community. It was started to mark the anniversary of the Stonewall riots, which were a landmark event in the fight for LGBT+ rights. We celebrate Pride Month to honour those who have fought for their rights, acknowledge the struggles the LGBT+ community continues to face to this day, and celebrate LGBT+ identities and culture.

This Pride Month, I want to give a special shoutout to those in the math community who also identify as LGBT+. As a member of the LGBT+ community myself, I’ve noticed a fair amount of stigma against being queer in math spaces—and surprisingly often coming from within the community itself. It’s one thing for us to make jokes amongst ourselves about how none of us can sit in chairs properly (I don’t even want to describe how I’m sitting as I write this), but the similar jokes I’ve heard my LGBT+ friends making about being bad at math are a lot more harmful than they might realize. And of course it isn’t just coming from within the community—many people have a notion (whether conscious or unconscious) that all LGBT+ people are artistically inclined, not mathematical or scientific. Obviously, that’s just not true! So I want to spend some time celebrating queerness in mathematics, and I invite you to do the same.

One of the ways we’re celebrating queerness in math here at Maplesoft is with new Pride-themed Maple Learn documents, created by Miles Simmons. What better way to celebrate Pride than with trigonometry? This document uses sinusoidal transformations to mimic a pride flag waving in the wind. You can adjust the phase shift, vertical shift, horizontal stretch, and vertical stretch to see how that affects the shape of the flag. Then, you can watch the animation bring the flag to life! It’s a great way to learn about and visualize the different ways sinusoidal waves can be transformed, all while letting your colours fly!

For more trigonometry, you can also check out this fun paint-by-numbers that can help you practice the sines, cosines, and tangents of special angles. And, as you complete the exercise, you can watch the Pride-themed image come to life! Nothing like adding a little colour to your math practice to make it more engaging.

If you’re looking for more you can do to support LGBT+ mathematicians this Pride Month, take a look at Spectra, an association for LGBT+ mathematicians. Their website includes an “Outlist” of openly LGBT+ mathematicians around the world, and contact information if you want to learn more about their experiences. The Fields Institute has also hosted LGBT+Math Days in the past, which showcases the research of LGBT+ mathematicians and their experiences of being queer in the math community. Blog posts like this one by Anthony Bonato, a math professor at Toronto Metropolitan University, and interviews like this one with Autumn Kent, a math professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, can also help allies in mathematics to understand the experiences of their queer colleagues and how to best support them. Math is everywhere and for everyone—so let’s make sure that the systems we use to teach and explore math are for everyone too!

Happy Pride! 🏳️‍🌈

The first day of Maple Conference 2022 is coming up on November 2 and it's not too late to register! Please go to our conference home page and click on the "Register Now" button. This is a free virtual event open to all.

The schedule is available on the conference agenda page.

Come join us to see recent developments in research, education and applications, find out about new and upcoming features in our products, talk to Maplesoft staff and other members of the Maple community and view (and vote on) Maple and Maple Learn artwork.

We hope to see you at the conference!