Scot Gould

Scot Gould

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11 years, 272 days
Claremont McKenna, Pitzer, Scripps College
Professor of Physics
Upland, California, United States
Dr. Scot Gould is a professor of physics at Claremont McKenna, Pitzer, and Scripps Colleges - members of The Claremont Colleges in California. He was involved in the early development of the atomic force microscope. His research has included numerous studies and experiments using scanning probe microscopes, particularly those involving natural fibers such as spider silk. More recently, he was involved in developing and sustaining AISS. This full-year multi-unit, non-traditional, interdisciplinary undergraduate science education course integrated topics from biology, chemistry, physics, mathematics, and computer science. His current interest is integrating computational topics into the physics curriculum. He teaches the use of Maple's computer algebraic and numerical systems to assist students in modeling and visualizing physical and biological systems. His Dirac-notation-based quantum mechanics course is taught solely through Maple.

MaplePrimes Activity


These are replies submitted by Scot Gould

If you are interested, I created a playlist of how to do Maple fundamentals. My approach uses 2D input and worksheets. Obviously, everyone has a different approach.  The intro video explains the approach. Skip it and go to video 1. The playlist is designed to watch the videos sequentially. 

Learning Maple Fundamentals

@Kitonum I'm glad your workaround was obvious to you. For me, it is education. I would have said:

L := [ isolve( a * b = 4) ];
select( s -> eval(a, s) >= 1, L)

But I like your answer more because it can be applied to a wider range of problems. 

@salim-barzani 

If you would prefer to stick with 2d-input consider selecting in the menu bar View->Atomic Variables. Then, there will be a color difference between a__1 and a[1].

My rule of thumb for subscripts are:
  * If a variable naturally has a subscript such as epsilon__0 in physics, write it as an atomic variable, not epsilon[0].
  * If a couple of variables naturally have been written as entities with subscripts such as x__0 and x__f, write them as atomic variables. 
  * If a variable is representing an entry into a sequence, list, set or vector, use indexing such as x[n].

From what I have seen of your document, RARELY would you benefit from using indexed variables such as beta[n]. In fact, you are more likely to have a problem with them versus the atomic variable beta__n. Why? Because what if 'n' is changed? Then beta[n] might get assigned the wrong value. But beta__n would not.  

Finally, even if you don't highlight atomic variables using View->Atomic Variables, variables with number subscripts are displayed differently if they are indexed versus atomic variables. The number in the subscript of an atomic variable is italicized. The number in the subscript of an indexed variable is not. Test it with:

> a[1], a__1

@segfault I should probably delete my comment. I misinterpreted your question while I had a break on a bike ride. The moral of the story is: Cycling and Mapling (is that a word?) don't mix. 

Are you aware of the option in series to designate the order? 

series(sin(x), x, 15)

@Christopher2222 @Ronan IMO, the goal of File -> Restore Backup is that you do NOT have to remember where files are stored. However, here are the instructions that I hand out

1) File -> Restore Backup

2) in the window, select the "View Menu" icon on the top far left. Change it to "Details."

3) Double-click on the "Modified" column enough times so that the date of when the files where modified is sorted. 

4) Click on the most recent file. (THIS IS A BIG PROBLEM IF YOU DON'T SORT.)

5) Save to the appropriate folder as a new name. 

@Christopher2222 

In Excel, with two windows open to work on two different worksheets, when I select View -> Arrange All-> Horizontal, I end up with menu ribbons shown within both windows. No space savings. I'm using MS Office 365 because that is the version that is the version my institution provides. So, your version may be different. (The different versions of Excel caused me nightmares in class one year. Now, I teach only through Google Sheets.)

However, if I select View -> Arrange All-> Tiled, then, within one window, multiple sections are shown. However, this is the same worksheet. Is this what you are referring to?  

I'm interested in how you see both Maple and Excel. I'm a big proponent of cutting down on unnecessary clutter since I enjoy working on a laptop with a 33-cm / 13-inch screen. 

First, which OS are you talking about? While I tile vertically in Windows, the same icons appear in both windows.  

Next, which icons clutter your screen? Do you use the Palettes like I do? I agree; they can take up extra screen space, but I like them. If not, the vertical icons take up space regardless of whether the window is half open or fully open. 

I'm considering moving to Apple simply because of its speed, but people who work in both environments are discouraging me. 

@Rouben Rostamian @acer , After more work on this problem, I came to the same conclusion. 

Looking at the numbers, with n = 4, thus i = 16, which makes j - 1 = 15, which means that at some point, it has to calculate (15!)^2, which is 1710012252724199424000000, which is why there is an overflow. 

@sursumCorda

Disregard. It is not the factorial. It is the squaring of the output of the factorial. In fact, any type of multiplication causes a problem. 

Sorry for the incorrect previous answer. I was trying to code this up before a bike ride this morning. Still no luck on a solution. A good puzzle. 

------------------------------

Update. Now I'm back to the factorial. Arghhhhhh. 

@janhardo Not exactly the question the OP had in mind, but it does work. Unfortunately, compared to ithprime, it is pathetically slow. (Maybe.) My 5-year-old computer took 73 seconds to calculate the one-millionth prime using the JonesM1 compiled code. However, ithprime returned the value essentially instantaneously. It was also incredibly quick for the 10-millionth prime. I wonder if Maple is using a saved look-up table to find the value. The 100-millionth prime took so long that I stopped it while it was running. I didn't feel like testing JonesM1 with that same value. So, your code may be faster. 

Remove the factorial. That is what causes the problem. I don't know why. Even mimicking the factorial with a loop doesn't help.  Sorry, I could not find a solution

@Ola Hi, I was testing out some properties of Maple, and it turned out your problem was a good example for me to use. It doesn't add anything beyond what Rob Corless told you. However, it includes an Explore app so that you can vary the initial values of P, Q, and R at t = 0 and see how the two functions change with time.  I thought you might find it interesting and helpful for other problems. 

MaplePrimes_Explore_6_ode_sols.mw

This problem is also known to occur in Maple. When that happens to me, I open up a new worksheet and copy everything to the new worksheet before saving it. Sometimes, I have to open a new instance of the Maple program to create the worksheet that will save. Maybe these ideas will work for you in Flow. 

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