Maple 12 opens and runs Maple 7 worksheets OK for me under XP.

Hope this helps.

J. Tarr

David,

Try looking at a globe in the way described in your first post .i.e. along the spin axis, and see if you can point to the East-West and North-South axes.

J. Tarr

In my world, an axis is a straight line, so it might be better to refer to constant r and theta contours. A bit clumsy, perhaps...

J. Tarr

Jacques,

We seem to be talking at cross-purposes.  The great majority of practicing engineers are employed by big corporations who use suites of finite element based software for design and many of these have been approved by codification and classification authorities for specific purposes, notably where safety is involved. I would be the last to suggest that any codification or classification authority had approved Matlab. There are, of course, some engineers outside big corporations who may want to explore an idea and in those circumstances Maple or Matlab could be helpful. My point is simply that there is not much of a market for Maple in the engineering world, of which I have long experience.
 

J. Tarr

Naturally, Maplesoft wants to expand sales of Maple. I am sure there is a market for Maple in the educational world - math, engineering and science education. That would imply that Maple should be developed - as far as backward compatibility allows - by improving its core, its packages such as VectorCalculus and Physics, and develop new packages to address perceived gaps. Some of the "pointy clicky" stuff seems to be aimed at the educational world, and those working in that world are best qualified to comment on its usefulness.

I am a great deal less sure that there is much of a market for Maple in the engineering world. Most engineers do not need to return to the very simple mathematical models that they used to learn engineering principles with the help of Maple or similar. Mostly, they use specialized software that models their problem more accurately and whose output is more usable. This is not the place to discuss such specialized software, except to say that it is expensive, has been developed over many years, can feed directly into drawing and manufacturing packages, and has been approved by various classification and codification authorities.

Perhaps the same kind of remarks applies to software for physics: Maple is great for helping to learn the principles, but real life is more complicated. If there are any practicing physicists out there, please add your two cents worth.

Jacques and Roman have already commented on Maple for math research.

I am driven to conclude that Maplesoft’s strategy should be to concentrate on the educational market, which as Jacques implies is mature.

J. Tarr

Allan,

I haven't got Maple 9.5 - I am using Maple 11.02. Perhaps you should upgrade to Maple 12?

J. Tarr

Allan,

I haven't got Maple 9.5 - I am using Maple 11.02. Perhaps you should upgrade to Maple 12?

J. Tarr

Jacques,

It's not just marketing that needs thought, but what Maple is intended to do. Is it to be primarily a tool for education? Or, a tool for math research? Or, what? As the person most qualified to speak on this subject, perhaps you would like to start a discussion on this topic.

Please excuse my veering a little off topic.

J. Tarr

Juan,

It is difficult to solve your problem without seeing your worksheet. Could you please upload it?

J. Tarr

Gernot,

Without seeing your text file, I can only guess that the first row contains entries that don't fit the specification [integer,float,float] - see ?readdata. Perhaps the very first entry should be the integer 1 but has been entered with a stop or comma after the 1 which maple sees as a floating point number, and so it does not match the specification. Or, are there blanks preceeding the first entry?

Tidying up your  text file should solve the problem.

Good luck,

J. Tarr

Gernot,

Without seeing your text file, I can only guess that the first row contains entries that don't fit the specification [integer,float,float] - see ?readdata. Perhaps the very first entry should be the integer 1 but has been entered with a stop or comma after the 1 which maple sees as a floating point number, and so it does not match the specification. Or, are there blanks preceeding the first entry?

Tidying up your  text file should solve the problem.

Good luck,

J. Tarr

Joe,

What does a non-integer number of trials (x) mean please?

J. Tarr

Jacob, You have been given the answer to your problem. Please study it. Good luck with Maple, J. Tarr

May I suggest that the last line should read F(10,x)? Hope this helps. J. Tarr

Is this an assignment? If so, it was intended to teach you to use symbols and model a real world situation. Here's how you might go about it using Maple's worksheet mode and 1D input. Assumption: Speeds will be in kph, times in hours and distances in km. Let the speed of the bus be Vb and the time it takes to cover the 200 km be tb. So, Vb = 200/tb. Let the speed of the car be Vc. So, Vc = Vb + 10. Since the car travels the 200 km in 1 hour less than the bus, Vc = 200/(tb - 1). We have 3 equations in 3 unknowns and so it should be possible to solve for them all. Now please see the help pages for solve and try to solve the equations for the 3 unknowns. Also explain why there are two answers for each unknown. Hope this helps. J. Tarr