I have a procedure, lfGn, with two or three real arguments, and I wish to find the maximum value of the procedure.  I was trying the Optimization package, and found this to be extremely slow.  Optimization was called with the following code: the first few lines just set some variables, for use in the last line, which does the call.

max2lfGn := proc (X::Vector) local a, d, e, f, H, m, s;
e := 10.^(1-floor((1/2)*Digits));
a:= Statistics:-Mean(X);
d := Statistics:-StandardDeviation(X);...

I have some 2-dimensional data to which I would like to fit a curve. The data is not functional, i.e. there can be multiple values of y for a given x. The curve should be continuous, but otherwise I have little idea about what form it should take. Maple provides a really nice way to plot one such curve: Statistics[ScatterPlot] with the lowess option. But I do not want to just plot the curve. I would also like to do computations with the curve. For example, I would like to compute the sum of squared residuals. What is the best way to get the curve (as a procedure, say)?

I was curious about what people put in their maple.ini files. For example, here is mine. interface(verboseproc=2): kernelopts(assertlevel=2): kernelopts(gcfreq=10000000): Testzero:= proc(O) evalb(simplify(O)=0) end proc: _Envsignum0:= 0: DataSummary:= (Statistics:-DataSummary)@(x->`if`(type(x, 'Array'), x, Array(x))): Would anyone have comments on this? What code do others use?

With Maple 11, the 2-D editor has become greatly more reliable. So now I am trying Document Mode for the first time. My question is this: what disadvantages does Document Mode have compared with (Standard) Worksheet Mode? I.e. given that 2-D input is being used, why would someone use Worksheet Mode instead of Document Mode?