Below is the deprecated version, above is the working logbook.
Maple Logbook
Personal Details
- Name: William Fayers
- Course: MTH1006 - Computer Algebra and Technical Computing
- Academic Year: 2023-2024
- Institution: University of Lincoln, School of Mathematics and Physics
Declaration
I confirm that this logbook is all my own work and that all references and quotations from both primary and secondary sources have been fully identified and properly acknowledged - William Fayers
Table of Contents
- Declaration
- Week by Week
- Week One, 29th January 2024 to 4th February 2024
- In-Class Work
- Tutorials
- Extra Work
- In-Class Work
- Week Two, 5th February 2024 to 11th February 2024
- In-Class Work
- Tutorials
- Calculator
- Calculus
- Extra Work
- In-Class Work
- Week One, 29th January 2024 to 4th February 2024
- References
Week by Week
I was unsure how to layout this logbook, due to the nature of Maple’s “documents”. However, at least for now whilst I learn what sort of problems we’ll be solving, I’ve decided on just linking the Maple Document files. I tried transcribing, as well as exporting them as various file types, but none of them procured visually appealing results.
Note: Review the layout in the future, perhaps re-exporting or developing a Python program to make it a bit nicer.
Week One, 29th January 2024 to 4th February 2024
Overall, this week pretty standard and simple! All we did were the basic Maple tutorials built into the program - they were simple, but definitely useful. The program is fairly unique compared to other tools I use regularly. To begin with, it was difficult just to understand what to do, but I eventually figured it out and then it was all very simple.
Since I didn’t feel very tested this week, and I know that it’s unlikely I’ll stay engaged with something that isn’t very engaging, at the first opportunity I had I went to the library and loaned a Maple book [1]! Hopefully it’ll be a useful supplement for my learning, and extend the difficulty of the problems each week.
In-Class Work
Tutorials
We began by demonstrating how simple arithmetic is calculated in Maple, then extended that to simple calculus, graphing, finding coefficients, then finally solving equations - even differential ones.
Whilst completing these first exercises, it felt a lot like my experience with WolframAlpha (and similar tools). Initially, the maths felt clunky, with the GUI being very necessary and slowing down my progress since I couldn’t simply type everything.
Next, we expressed the usefulness of Maple versus similar tools like the aforementioned WolframAlpha: combining text with maths! I found this was very useful, and honestly wish I had the ability in my normal maths notetaking (maybe I’ll try it out for a week, but it’s unlikely).
More than this, we demonstrated the ability to solve equations more, and assigning expressions to mathematical functions and procedures - the latter of which being similar to the programming construct of “functions”.
Extra Work
After loaning the Maple book[1] from the library, I immediately went home and began working through the questions. I spent about an hour going through the first chunk of the questions, finding a few interesting things in them.
First, each calculation ended in either ; (if the calculation was to be displayed as a block) or : (if the calculation was to be displayed inline). I assume this is from the worksheet form of Maple (rather than the document form), but I’ve adopted the same convention, since I think it helps to differentiate from the inline answers better.
Secondly, I’ve learned a few ways to type everything more, rather than just using the GUI, which has been very useful in engaging with Maple. I also learned how to plot multiple equations on a single graph, and in multiple dimensions. I even learned about the different packages you can use, like plots and plottools.
Finally, I not only learned some more commands to evaluate, simplify, and convert expressions in different ways, but also a very important takeaway: how Maple calculates expressions. From this, I understand how verbose you have to be with Maple, explicitly using commands to state certain traits so that it has expected behaviour. I quite like this, though, as it allows for much more personalised output.
At this point I stopped, since I didn’t want to go into content for next week, instead waiting for our session on Monday to clarify what future lectures will hold.
Extra Exercises (pages 1-34).mw
Week Two, 5th February 2024 to 11th February 2024
This week was similarly simple to last week, but I could really tell how my extra work helped me remember how certain commands work and the nuances of Maple. Overall, a good week!
In-Class Work
Tutorials
We begun this week with some more tutorials, which coincidently coincide with the work I did last extra last week. First, we went over some common commands, as well as some packages to use more commands.
Next up, we learned about plotting in 2D and higher dimensions, as well as plotting multiple graphs on a single graph. After a lot of simple work, the final exercise was quite tricky - to make an interactive graph with variables, like so (using the Explore command):
Explore(plot(sin(a*x + b) + c, x = -10 .. 10), parameters = [a = -10 .. 10, b = -10 .. 10, c = -10 .. 10])Calculator
Next felt like a bit of a test of the knowledge we learned during the tutorial questions - some simple calculations that I completed pretty quickly.
Calculus
Last, some calculus! This was again quite simple, apart from one set of questions: checking which integrals can be solved by Maple analytically and which are solvable numerically. I wasn’t sure what this meant, so I tried to simply evaluate each expression - this worked for all but two questions which returned Error, unable to match delimiters. Perhaps I’ll understand more during the extra work later in the week and come back to fix this.
Extra Work
No extra work this week due to a lack of time.
Week Three, 12th February 2024 to 18th February 2024
…
In-Class Work
Extra Work
…
References
[1] Martha and J. P. Braselton, Maple By Example. Elsevier, 2005.