And if you're going to blame Maple, it would be a good idea to try other software (like Matlab) to see what is really going on. If by ``real number'' you mean ``floating point number'', which is a gross mistake perpetrated on most students these days, which too few professors even realize how misleading that is.

Being "first class" means that they can exist on their own, at the top-level. So you have proven that, in Maple 11, hardware floats are now first class, that's great! For example, a 'for' loop is not a first class construct in Maple. Nor is a statement sequence.

Being "first class" means that they can exist on their own, at the top-level. So you have proven that, in Maple 11, hardware floats are now first class, that's great! For example, a 'for' loop is not a first class construct in Maple. Nor is a statement sequence.

Abstract matrices are essentially just names for objects with properties. In Maple, that is best done using names (ie symbols) and adding properties to them; the simplest way to do that is via attributes.

This is not at all surprising - you are using numbers that are 12 orders of magnitude different from each other! At Digits=10, you don't have enough precision to even 'see' that! So I am not surprised that the results are bogus. At Digits=15, already things should be better [since the problem itself is ok], and at Digits=20, you should get great results.

It can be done. But I doubt that the problems related to assume are perceived as grave enough to warrant it, unlike linalg/LinearAlgebra.

A Vector of arbitrary Maple objects and a list of arbitrary Maple objects take essentially the same amount of space (Vector might take 2 or 3 words more, regardless of length). However, it used to be (until Maple 10, and I am not sure that was finished Maple 11 though it was worked on) that you could only store hardware floats in Vectors (rtables), not lists. So for ultimate space efficiency, Vectors of hardware datatypes are best. It is possible that hardware floats are now first-class objects in Maple 11, but I don't remember seeing that in the updates.

A Vector of arbitrary Maple objects and a list of arbitrary Maple objects take essentially the same amount of space (Vector might take 2 or 3 words more, regardless of length). However, it used to be (until Maple 10, and I am not sure that was finished Maple 11 though it was worked on) that you could only store hardware floats in Vectors (rtables), not lists. So for ultimate space efficiency, Vectors of hardware datatypes are best. It is possible that hardware floats are now first-class objects in Maple 11, but I don't remember seeing that in the updates.

In Classic, look up ?updates. In the browser, you will see a list of the updates for all versions going back to 4.0. I am not sure if it is as easy in Standard.

In Classic, look up ?updates. In the browser, you will see a list of the updates for all versions going back to 4.0. I am not sure if it is as easy in Standard.

As if I need that!

Might it make sense to allow all posters who have a silver-leaf (or better) to do this? The more frequently we post, the more chances of errors.

My reaction is that this should really be done via indexing functions. What 'should' be possible would be to annotate the indexing functions in such a way that the properties of the indexing functions are 'visible' somehow -- perhaps via attributes! It of course makes no sense to figure out what an indexing function does via looking at its code, these things should really be described declaratively. But the idea of having more general indexing transformations is quite compatible with the current design.

Also, I would like to be able to 'mark' a post. Either I could mark it 'unread', or with some other flag. Use: I often read a post, want to reply to it, but don't have enough time to do it right then. Later, when I do have the time, I don't remember where that post was!

Most of these are documented, but often in an obscure place: old "What's New". And often one single line in a "What's New". One of the most instructive things to do is to spend the time and read every single "What's Now" in the help system, going back to Maple 4.0 [which long predates Maple V R4]. Those help pages are packed full of hidden gems. Plus they are a fun lesson in history!