I find it very odd that this forum which is not very graphic intensive runs so slowly.  It runs like there's animated ads running in the background slowing things down, but this is a text forum with the odd graphic in the threads but hardly anything else.  I can't see why it can't work so much faster.

Why must one have high speed and the latest browser for this site to work marginally well?  Load times for the home page should load almost instantly, on...

The MRB constant is defined at http://mathworld.wolfram.com/MRBConstant.html.

On about Dec 31, 1998 I computed 1 digit of the MRB constant with my TI-92's, by adding 1-sqrt(2)+3^(1/3)-4^(1/4) as far as I could. That first digit by the way is just 0.

On Jan 11, 1999 I computed 3 digits of the MRB constant with the Inverse Symbolic Calculator.

restart; interface(version);
  Classic Worksheet Interface, Maple 12.02, Windows, Dec 10 2008 Build ID 377066

B:=binomial(x,k)/binomial(-x,k);

convert(B, GAMMA);
simplify(%);
% assuming x::integer;

                                  0

#but

Create a maplet or worksheet for the game Blokus. 

On that note, we should have a counter or tally in the post to show how many people want to work on or are attempting to work on the challenge.  That way people can see if there is progress happening behind the scenes.

Jacques' post on the maple.vim project spurred this post.  Vim users cannot have all the fun.

About a year ago I wrote an Emacs front-end for the Maple debugger.  I've used it since---it is now my primary debugging tool for Maple code.  What it does is allow stepping through interpreted Maple code in an Emacs buffer.  That is, rather than being presented with a single line of...

This is a follow-up to a rather old posting about maple.vim.  There is now a maplevim project on google code to helpfully get the community to work on upgrading maple.vim a bit more frequently. 

Right now there is a shipping version of maple.vim checked-in, as well as a set of 'pieces' (in the pieces sub-directory...

We just published an update to MaplePrimes that dramatically decreases the load times for thread pages. The improvement comes from not including the Comments or Branch information in the initial page load. Instead, the comments and branches are loaded via JavaScript after the initial page load. We are also loading the right hand sidebar of the site using JavaScript, so the size of each page is much smaller. Your browser will cache the sidebar and only reload it when new information appears there.

In our experimentation, we find that thread pages load considerably faster especially for pages with many comments. Also, and added bonus of serving the sidebar via JavaScript means that the Google spider will no longer include the sidebar content in its index, so this issue will be resolved.

While reviewing code the other day, I came across the following snippet (here converted to a procedure).

Ds := proc(V::set, n::posint, t)
local i,v;
    {seq(seq((D@@i)(v)(t), i=1..n), v in V)};
end proc:

The purpose of this is to generate a set of derivatives at a point of a set of unassigned names. For example

 Ds({x,y},2,0);
               ...

It always makes me happy to see people using Maple for interesting things.  So I was pleased to see this blog post on Technology Review about this paper on arXiv on quantum randomness.  In this case, they are just comparing random numbers generated from lasers (this is why physicists get better press than mathematicians: LASERS!) with pseudo-random numbers generated using Meresenne Twister implemented in Maple, pseudo-random numbers generated using a Celluar Automata method implemented in another computer algebra system, and then binary digits of π treated as a pseudo-random sequence.  (Spoiler: the lasers win)

While not a particularly interesting use of computer algebra systems, it did inspire me to revisit my old blog post on pseudo-random numbers in Maple and now I am working on a follow up that talks about some of the mathematical and statitical tests used to test the quality of pseudo-random number sequences which I hope to post soon.

This sites needs better rendering of 2D Math.

Here is a sample from the Wikipedia page for Maplesoft, from the pdes example section. The image on Wikipedia is quite nice (it's alt-tags have LaTeX code, which may be a hint).

This week, I had the pleasure of attending a rock concert with my son Eric who is now about to turn 15 and who has turned out to possess non-trivial interests and talents in music. The concert was by the band Rush who, to the uninitiated, would be yet another big, loud, over-produced rock band. But to a generation of technocrats (e.g. yours truly) educated from the late 1970’s and on, they are the band of choice due to an intriguing mix of musicianship, technological...

There is a probem in the Optimization package's (nonlinear programming problem) NLPSolve routine which affects multivariate problems given in so-called Operator form. That is, when the objective and constraints are not provided as expressions. Below is a workaround for this.

Usually, an objective (or constraint) gets processed by Optimization using automatic differentiation tools ...

The welcome to the new Version 2 of Mapleprimes was announced on May 27, 2010.

On June 17, 2010, Will wrote, "We will likely re-visit the number of up-votes required for the various badges. No one has earned any of the up-vote related badges yet, so it may be important that we change the numbers required."

If I was working for MapleSoft and I wanted to make sure that
Maple would become the best mathematics software in the world
the first thing I would look at would be my competitors.

I had a look at Mathematica's website and their marketing outline
some some very cool functionality that speak to my heart directly.
1) Integrated datasources  2) real time data analysis etc etc

I dont really like Mathematica due to their retarded programming

An interesting discussion on rule-based integration and a new symbolic computer algebra package for it, named Rubi is ongoing in this long usenet thread.

(The Rubi link above seems to work ok, although the link in the top article of that usenet thread may not. YMMV.)

There's also some interesting subtext related to how practical developments in computer algebra systems can come about.