Justin Grantham

Laboratory 1: Introduction to Maple

Math 161
2/19/2008

Introduction:

In lab today I was introduced to the math program Maple. I was very impressed,
and surprised that a program can do everything we have been doing in class. The fact
that it can manipulate symbols and integrate really surprises me. The power of this
program will surely become very useful in my future math career.

1. What happens if you type sin(pi/2) versus sin(Pi/2)?

 1

It appears that in the first equation, it evaluated pi symbolically and didn’t give it
a numerical equivalent.

In the Second equation it would appear that Maple took Pi as literally 3.14…etc
and evaluated sin at that value.

2. Study the expressions sin(arcsin(x)) and arcsin(sin(x)).

 x

The first equation, , came out as I expected, leaving x.

The second equation though just gave back my input. I would guess it is because
it does not know the domain restrictions of sin to make it a one-to-one function.
 3. Consider the limits , , and

 Undefined

: This seems to be correct. The function 1/x evaluated at the limit x=0, is
undefined because it goes to positive infinity from the +x direction, and negative infinity
from the –x direction.

 0

: This also looks correct. As the denominator approaches infinity the fraction
would approach zero.

 -1

: Again this is correct, since both the numerator and denominator approach
infinity, and one is negative.

4. Compute the limit lim[h0]

 

This is the definition of a limit. This makes sense because the derivative of sin(x) is
cos(x).

5. Compute the following derivatives:

(a)

Differentiate the equation:

Set the Derivative to be variable dg1

Evaluate dg1 at x=0

 0

This appears to be correct.

(b)

Take the second derivative of the function:

 

Set the second derivative to be variable d2g2:

Evaluate d2g2 at x=0

This also looks correct. Maple seems to leave e^0 in that form as opposed to changing it
to the value of 1.

6. Compute the following integrals:

(a)

It appears correctly; the program leaves it in fractional form, and leaves e symbolically.
(b)

 0

This is correct, it calculated the definite integral between -1 and 1 correctly.